Available Solvers | Grid Optimization Competition

ARPA-E hopes to make a number of common software packages and solvers available by default in the competition platform. Initially, the solver libraries available may include:

AMPL (from AMPL) Please contact the GO Operations Team to find out which solvers supported by AMPL are available. AMPL supported solvers may or may not be the same version that is available to Entrants directly.
CPLEX (22.1.1) (from IBM)
CVX (2.1) (from CVX Research)
GAMS (37.1.0) (from GAMS) Please contact the GO Operations Team to find out which solvers supported by GAMS are available. GAMS supported solvers may or may not be the same version that is available to Entrants directly.
Gurobi (10.0.2) (from GUROBI Optimization)
Ipopt (3.12.13) (from COIN|OR)
MOSEK (10) (from MOSEK) License note: You must put your trial or personal academic license in the root directory of your repository with the name <GitHubUsername>-mosek.lic
PARDISO (8.0) (from Panua Technologies)

Important: The competition platform is intended for algorithm evaluation only. You will need to purchase your own license for any solvers or modeling languages that are needed during the algorithm development process. If you wish to use a different solver or modeling language during execution of your code on the competition platform, please indicate your preferred solver on the Registration form or contact us. We will do our best to accommodate you; however, last-minute requests are unlikely to be satisfied.

PowerWorld: "PowerWorld Simulator runs on Microsoft Windows operating systems version 7/Server 2008R2 and newer (64-bit editions only). No other operating systems are supported." The Competition principal evaluation platform is Linux based, however the GO Operations Team has developed access to a Windows HPC system, running on identical hardware as the Linux system, to permit the use of PowerWorld by Competition Entrants. If you require access to PowerWorld, please contact the GO Operations Team.

Siemens PSS®E: This system also runs only on Windows and is accessible through the same Windows HPC platform as PowerWorld. Currently, the Optimal Power Flow (OPF) module is not available. If you require access to PSS®E, please contact the GO Operations Team.

Notice: The interaction of the solvers and the languages that invoke them is complex and not all versions of a solver may be compatible with a given language or modeling program. Entrants are strongly encouraged to test their algorithms in the Sandbox as early as possible and if you should encounter difficulties, please contact the GO Operations Team.

Best Solver: Which solver is best for a particular problem? Competition collaborator Hans Mittlemann (Arizona State University) may know. He benchmarks many solvers and posts the results on his website: https://plato.asu.edu/bench.html. Previous benchmarks to track development can be found at https://mattmilten.github.io/mittelmann-plots/. Hans also chairs Recent Progress in Optimization Software, (Monday, October 16, 2023) at the annual INFORMS conferences.