Probabilistic transmission expansion planning for increasing wind power penetration

Wind power is one of the promising renewable energy resources to achieve energy sustainability. Its growth poses increasing financial and technical challenges to power systems, mainly due to the wind intermittency. Existing transmission networks may require infrastructure investment, in order to maintain the economical, secure and reliable operations of power systems with increasing wind power penetration. This study proposes a stochastic transmission expansion planning (TEP) framework to assess the impacts of wind power penetration and demand response incorporation. A risk constraint on load curtailment is introduced and its effect on TEP solutions is investigated. Also, to reduce the complexity and size the formulated TEP problem, a decomposition-based approach is adopted. According to the numerical results on the Garver's six-bus and the modified IEEE 30-bus systems, the solutions of TEP are subject to the variation of wind power characteristics and cannot be determined straightforward. Hence risk-analysis should be carried out to guide transmission investment with increased flexibility. The incorporation of wind power uncertainty increases the total cost and expected energy not supplied, which can be mitigated by the proposed TEP approach.