Dear all,

I am implementing a search for the maximum loadability limit using an OPF with 
dispatchable loads in Matpower. To model PV buses, I set generator voltage set 
points as upper limits for the voltage magnitude at generator buses and set the 
lower voltage limits at a low number (0.1 for example). Also, I keep the 
reactive power upper limit. When the OPF has run, I check the shadow prices of 
the upper bound constraints on voltage magnitudes to identify the generators 
which are still PV buses and the generators which have become PQ buses. During 
my testing, I ran into cases where the upper bounds voltage constraints are 
non-binding, but the corresponding shadow prices are nonzero. I believe it is 
due to the different thresholds used to check binding constraints. In 
particular, as far as I understood, the shadow prices of all non-binding 
constraints are set to zero by the following lines (mips solver):

%% zero out multipliers on non-binding constraints
mu(h < -opt.feastol & mu < mu_threshold) = 0;

My understanding is that the first condition h < -opt.feastol checks for 
non-bining constraints (deviations from the limit h is larger than the 
tolerance opt.feastol). I do not understand the second condition, however (mu < 
mu_threshold), which checks for the magnitude of the Lagrange multipliers. In 
my results, I have the case where h for a constraint is indeed larger than the 
opt.feastol threshold (h=7 e-4) but the corresponding Lagrange multiplier is 
larger than the mu_threshold (mu=2 e-4) so that the shadow price is not set to 
zero. Note also that the product of h and mu for the corresponding constraint 
is small enough for the last MIPS iteration to conclude on convergence (i.e. 
the relative complementarity constraint is satisfied).

My question would then be:

-        What is the meaning of having the second check (mu < mu_threshold) in 
identifying the non-binding constraints?

Kind regards,
Camille Hamon
Post doc
Department of Electrical Power Engeneering
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)

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