Configure-and-Bound: A fast heuristic for network topology reconfiguration

Congestion management is a key challenge in power systems, and topology reconfiguration offers a promising solution. This paper introduces the Configure-and-Bound (C&B) algorithm to efficiently solve network topology reconfiguration (NTR) problems, focusing on substation switching and busbar splitting. By exploiting the locality effects of switching maneuvers, the C&B algorithm significantly reduces the computational time required to solve the NP-hard NTR problems, while achieving most of the cost savings achieved by exact methods. We explore the conditions under which the proposed C&B algorithm is most effective by classifying congestion into two broad classes; near congestion and far congestion. The locality condition and the foundation of the proposed algorithm generalize to a broader class of (power system) optimization problems. Case studies done on IEEE 39, 118, 240, 300, 500, 588, and 793 bus systems demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can reduce the computational runtime by up to 99% and achieve up to 99.9% similar costs relative to the global optimal solution.