Comparative Analysis of Constructive Heuristic Algorithms for Transmission Expansion Planning

Abstract

Transmission Expansion Planning (TEP) is a complex optimization problem that has the purpose of determining how the transmission capacity of a network should be enlarged, satisfying the increasing demand. This problem has combinatorial nature and different alternative plans can be designed so that many algorithms can converge towards local optima. This feature drives the development of tools that combine high robustness and low computational effort. This paper presents a comparative analysis and a detailed review of the main Constructive Heuristic Algorithms (CHA) used in the TEP problem. This kind of tools combine low computational effort with reasonable quality solutions and can be associated with other tools to use in a subsequent step in order to improve the final solution. CHAs proved to be very effective and showed good performance as the test results will illustrate.

Simulated Annealing with Gaussian Probability Density Function for Transmission Expansion Planning

“…figure 7. The cost for this expansion is US$ 200.000.000,00 and this solution is the optimal expansion for this circuit (Gomes, 2014). Throughout the process the cost of the solution was varying according to Figure 8, in this figure one can note that near to iteration 400 the process change the current solution by a worst solution, i.e., with a higher cost.…”

“…The solution has the expansion on the lines 4-6 (3) and 3-5 (1) as shown in figure 6. The cost for this expansion is US$ 110.000.000,00 and this solution is the optimal expansion for this circuit (Gomes, 2014). The new topology of the system with the additions of the lines is shown in Figure 5: Throughout the process the cost of the solution was varying according to Figure 6, in this figure it is evident that the exchange of current solutions to the worst solutions, with higher costs in this case, happen after the iteration number about 400, that is when the changes for cheaper solutions leave the system operating incorrectly, i.e., cutting load or with congestion on the lines.…”