MIPS - MATPOWER Interior Point Solver

The MATPOWER Interior Point Solver (MIPS) is a package of MATLAB/Octave M-files for solving non-linear programming problems (NLPs) using a primal dual interior point method. MIPS is based on code written in C language by Hongye Wang as a graduate student at Cornell University for optimal power flow applications. It was later ported to the MATLAB/Octave language by Ray D. Zimmerman for use in MATPOWER.

System Requirements

• MATLAB version 7 (R14) or later, or
• GNU Octave version 3.4 or later
• MP-Test version 7.1 or later

Installation

Note to MATPOWER users: MIPS and its prerequiste, MP-Test, are included when you install MATPOWER. There is generally no need to install them separately. You can skip directly to step 3 to verify.

Installation and use of MIPS requires familiarity with the basic operation of MATLAB or Octave, including setting up your MATLAB/Octave path.

1. Clone the repository or download and extract the zip file of the MIPS distribution from the MIPS project page to the location of your choice. The files in the resulting mips or mipsXXX directory, where XXX depends on the version of MIPS, should not need to be modified, so it is recommended that they be kept separate from your own code. We will use <MIPS> to denote the path to this directory.

2. Add the following directories to your MATLAB or Octave path:

   • <MIPS>/lib
   • <MIPS>/lib/t
   • <MIPS>/examples

3. At the MATLAB/Octave prompt, type test_mips to run the test suite and verify that MIPS is properly installed and functioning. The result should resemble the following: ```

   testmips tmplinsolve......ok (8 of 180 skipped) tmips............ok tmipspardiso....ok (60 of 60 skipped) tqps_mips........ok All tests successful (304 passed, 68 skipped of 372) Elapsed time 0.07 seconds. ```

Documentation

There are two primary sources of documentation for MIPS. The first is the MIPS User's Manual, which gives an overview of the capabilities and structure of MIPS and describes the formulations behind the code. It can be found in your MIPS distribution at <MIPS>/docs/MIPS-manual.pdf and the latest version is always available at: https://github.com/MATPOWER/mips/blob/master/docs/MIPS-manual.pdf.

And second is the built-in help command. As with the built-in functions and toolbox routines in MATLAB and Octave, you can type help followed by the name of a command or M-file to get help on that particular function. All of the M-files in MIPS have such documentation and this should be considered the main reference for the calling options for each function, namely: mips, mipsver, and qps_mips.

Publications

1. H. Wang, C. E. Murillo-Sánchez, R. D. Zimmerman, R. J. Thomas, "On Computational Issues of Market-Based Optimal Power Flow," Power Systems, IEEE Transactions on, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 1185-1193, Aug. 2007.
   doi: 10.1109/TPWRS.2007.901301.

2. H. Wang, On the Computation and Application of Multi-period Security-constrained Optimal Power Flow for Real-time Electricity Market Operations, Ph.D. thesis, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University, May 2007.

Citing MIPS

We request that publications derived from the use of the MATPOWER Interior Point Solver (MIPS) explicitly acknowledge that fact by citing the following 2007 paper.

H. Wang, C. E. Murillo-Sánchez, R. D. Zimmerman, R. J. Thomas, "On Computational Issues of Market-Based Optimal Power Flow," Power Systems, IEEE Transactions on, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 1185-1193, Aug. 2007.
doi: 10.1109/TPWRS.2007.901301

The MATPOWER Interior Point Solver (MIPS) User's Manual should also be cited explicitly in work that refers to or is derived from its content. The citation and DOI can be version-specific or general, as appropriate. For version 1.5.2, use:

R. D. Zimmerman, H. Wang. MATPOWER Interior Point Solver (MIPS) User's Manual, Version 1.5.2. 2025. [Online]. Available: https://matpower.org/docs/MIPS-manual-1.5.2.pdf
doi: 10.5281/zenodo.15871404

For a version non-specific citation, use the following citation and DOI, with <YEAR> replaced by the year of the most recent release:

R. D. Zimmerman, H. Wang. MATPOWER Interior Point Solver (MIPS) User's Manual. <YEAR>. [Online]. Available: https://matpower.org/docs/MIPS-manual.pdf
doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3236506

A list of versions of the User's Manual with release dates and version-specific DOI's can be found via the general DOI at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3236506.

Contributing

Please see our contributing guidelines for details on how to contribute to the project or report issues.

License

MIPS is distributed under the 3-clause BSD license.