Robust transmission expansion planning considering private investments maximization

Deregulation in power systems has created new uncertainties and increased the previous ones. The presence of these uncertainties, high investment costs, and long period investment return cause the transmission network to remain monopoly and the private investors not being interested in investing in this section. This paper presents a new approach for transmission expansion planning (TEP) in order to maximize private investment absorption. The robust optimization method is used to model the inherent uncertainties associated with the estimated investment cost of candidate lines and the forecasted system load. The genetic algorithm (GA) is, also, utilized as the methodology to solve the optimization problem. According to this algorithm, the power system operators will introduce the most attractive investment plans for private investors in the presence of uncertainties. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, it has been applied to the IEEE RTS 24-bus system.