  Due to changes in electric distribution grid operation, new operation regimes
have been recommended. Distribution grid optimal power flow (DOPF) has received
tremendous attention in the research community, yet it has not been fully
adopted across the utility industry. Our paper recognizes this problem and
suggests a development and integration procedure for DOPF. We propose
development of DOPF as a three step procedure of 1) processing the grid, 2)
obtaining a tractable solution, and 3) implementing multiple solution
algorithms and benchmarking them to improve application reliability. For the
integration of DOPF, we demonstrate how a DOPF federate may be developed that
can be integrated in a co-simulation environment to mimic the real-world
conditions and hence improve its practicality to be deployed in the field. To
demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed methods, tests on IEEE 123-bus system
are performed where the usage of tractable formulation in DOPF algorithm
development and its comparison to the benchmark solution are demonstrated.
