A Comparative Study of Metaheuristic Methods for Transmission Network Expansion Planning

Introduction

Transmission network expansion planning (TNEP) is an important part of the power system planning. It deals in finding the set of transmission lines to be constructed among the available candidate lines for the transmission expansion, such that the cost of the expansion plan is minimum and there are no overloads during the planning horizon.

The complexity of the problem has increased even more due to restructuring of the power systems. The various factors affecting the TNEP are future load, generation scenarios, right of way constraints, costs and capacities of lines etc. The transmission network expansion planning is of two types: static and dynamic. Static TNEP is done in a single planning horizon, whereas dynamic TNEP requires stage wise addition of lines over the planning horizon with varying stage wise loads. Basically, TNEP is dynamic in nature; however, most of the research work in the literature is for a simple static problem to keep the mathematical formulation simple.

This paper also considers the static TNEP model only. However, the algorithms can be extended for a multistage transmission network expansion planning. DC load flow model is used for simplicity.