Multistage Transmission Network Augmentation Planning Using Benders Decomposition: a Market-Based Approach

This paper presents a renovated multistage transmission network augmentation planning (TNAP) model to relieve the level of transmission congestion during the planning horizon. The well-known Benders decomposition approach is exploited to decompose the original mixed integer linear programming (MILP) planning problem into a master problem and two sub-problems representing system security and optimal operation. The main task of security sub-problem is to evaluate the transmission system security through the well-know N-1 contingency criterion. This planning methodology implicitly models the level of electricity market competitiveness in terms of appending a specific term into the TNAP objective function designated as transmission congestion level (TCL). The TCL value represents the absolute difference between the system nodal marginal prices (NMPs) fur all the system buses. Also, the operation sub-problem enables the proposed TNAP model to the TCL value during planning studies. Therefore, the proposed TNAP approach minimizes the total investment costs as well as the level of transmission congestion. The proposed methodology is implemented to the northeastern area of the Iranian power grid effectively. Copyright (c) 2012 Praise Worthy Prize S.r.l. - All rights reserved.