Computational acceleration strategies for large-scale energy system optimization: a comparative study of GPU-accelerated and distributed-memory solvers

TL;DR

This study compares GPU-accelerated first-order methods and distributed-memory interior-point methods for large-scale energy system optimization, highlighting their respective advantages in scalability, speed, and solution accuracy.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive computational comparison of two emerging solver architectures, demonstrating their effectiveness on large, structured energy system models.

Findings

Distributed-memory IPMs leverage problem structure for speed-ups.

GPU-accelerated FOMs offer strong scalability but with higher infeasibility.

Both methods expand the computational toolbox for energy system optimization.

Abstract

Energy system optimization models are increasing in scope and resolution, yielding large and challenging linear programs. For a long time, the standard way to address such problems has relied on shared-memory interior-point methods (IPM), which combine robustness and accuracy but face scalability limits as model instance size grows. Recently, two promising directions for specialized solver architectures have emerged: (i) GPU-accelerated first-order methods (FOM); and (ii) distributed-memory IPM, which can exploit block structure that arises in many energy system models. This paper presents a computational study comparing these solver classes on a diverse test set of large-scale linear programs arising from energy system analysis, including scenario-based formulations derived from stochastic programming. The results illustrate that distributed-memory IPM can leverage problem structure to deliver substantial speed-ups on specific problems with block-angular structures. GPU-accelerated FOMs demonstrate strong scalability but may yield solutions with higher relative infeasibilities, which, depending on the use case and model uncertainty, can still be acceptable. Overall, our findings indicate that recent algorithmic and hardware advances substantially broaden the computational toolbox available to the energy system optimization community. Each solver class exhibits distinct advantages: shared-memory IPMs remain a powerful tool for reliably obtaining high-accuracy solutions; distributed-memory IPMs can extend scalability to hundreds of cores for certain structured models, enabling faster time-to-solution; and GPU-based FOM can deliver fast solutions when such lower accuracy levels are appropriate. Together, they help make high-resolution, multi-scenario energy system optimization models tractable across a broader range of problem sizes and computing environments.