Patent Document ID: 9863985
Application ID: 13862139
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for estimating a state for each of a plurality of alternating current (AC) electrical power buses within a power grid, the method comprising: receiving, with an energy management system for the power grid, measurements of an electrical characteristic from a plurality of measurement units (MUs) positioned at a subset of the power buses within the power grid; processing the measurements of the electrical characteristic with the energy management system to compute an estimate of the electrical characteristic currently occurring at each of the power buses within the power grid, the estimates of the electrical characteristic being nonlinearly related to the measurements of the electrical characteristic, wherein processing the measurements of the electrical characteristic comprises: applying semidefinite relaxation to compute a semidefinite programming model for the power buses within the power grid that linearly relates the estimates for the electrical characteristic to the measurements of the electrical characteristic; and iteratively processing the measurements of the electrical characteristic in accordance with the semidefinite programming model to compute a convex minimization as a solution for the estimates of the electrical characteristic; and controlling operation of one or more of the power buses based on the computed estimates.