Comparing Power Flow Approximations for Electricity Infrastructure Capacity Expansion Models with High Spatial Resolution

Future electricity system portfolios will require strategic transmission expansions for economically integrating regionally dependent, high-quality renewable resources. In this context, accurate representation of transmission flows in large-scale electricity infrastructure capacity expansion planning problems is important. This paper describes an approximate linearized power flow transmission modeling method for such expansion problems and demonstrates the impact on planning solutions using the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's Regional Energy Deployment System (ReEDS) model. Results are compared against a pipe flow transmission representation, which is used in a number of large-scale planning models. We show that national-scale generation and transmission expansion is not substantially influenced by the power flow methodology but that the pipe flow representation does underestimate required transmission capacity and total system costs.