Definition and Theory of Transmission Network Planning

Abstract

With increasing interest in building large-scale solar parks and wind farms and the implementation of new environmental regulations that will result in retirement of some conventional power plants, the need for building new transmission is inevitable even in regions with low demand growth. Planning of such network expansion is therefore increasingly important, particularly because the cost of new transmission is typically higher in real terms than historical costs. This chapter contains five sections. In the first section, the impact of different factors affecting transmission expansion planning (TEP) is investigated, and different models for transmission investment financing and coordination are reviewed. The second section covers a literature review on TEP studies. Different TEP optimization formulations and available decomposition techniques are explained in the third section. Then, a general framework for solving large-scale TEP studies is reviewed, and computational challenges/potential solutions are investigated from different perspectives in section four. The chapter concludes with a section on numerical analysis, in which large-scale network models are used to demonstrate capabilities of optimization-based TEP studies.