Privacy-Preserving Operation of Interconnected Distribution Networks with Soft Open Points

Interconnected distribution networks (IDNs) are flexible to coordinate distributed energy resources across multiple regions. In these networks, using soft open points (SOPs) as the interconnection switches may enhance the operational efficiency by providing additional control capacity. However, the existing centralized operation scheme can hardly apply to IDNs because of the privacy concerns. Two types of sensitive information should be properly protected: the inner parameters of networks and inter-communication variables of SOPs. To address this issue, this paper proposes a novel privacy-preserving operation model to run IDNs in a distributed manner. In particular, we establish the iterative optimization policy for SOPs using the second-order conic programming and alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). This policy is able to efficiently secure the inner parameters. As for the protection of intercommunication variables, an encryption communication strategy based on Paillier Cryptosystem is then developed and integrated within the iterative update process in ADMM. Simulation results on a typical IDN validate the superior performance of the proposed model in terms of the optimality and privacy-preserving performance.