Quantum-Enhanced Reinforcement Learning for Accelerating Newton-Raphson Convergence with Ising Machines: A Case Study for Power Flow Analysis

Abstract

The Newton-Raphson (NR) method is widely used for solving power flow (PF) equations due to its quadratic convergence. However, its performance deteriorates under poor initialization or extreme operating scenarios, e.g., high levels of renewable energy penetration. Traditional NR initialization strategies often fail to address these challenges, resulting in slow convergence or even divergence. We propose the use of reinforcement learning (RL) to optimize the initialization of NR, and introduce a novel quantum-enhanced RL environment update mechanism to mitigate the significant computational cost of evaluating power system states over a combinatorially large action space at each RL timestep by formulating the voltage adjustment task as a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization problem. Specifically, quantum/digital annealers are integrated into the RL environment update to evaluate state transitions using a problem Hamiltonian designed for PF. Results demonstrate significant improvements in convergence speed, a reduction in NR iteration counts, and enhanced robustness under different operating conditions.