Accelerating the Composite Power System Planning by Benders Decomposition

This paper presents an application of Benders decomposition to deal with the complexities in the simultaneous Generation Expansion Planning (GEP) and Transmission Expansion Planning (TEP). Unlike the power system operation fields of study, the power system planning methods are not expected to be fast. However, it is always preferable to speed up computations to provide more analysis options for the planner. In this study, Benders decomposition has been applied to solve a mixed integer linear programming formulation of simultaneous GEP & TEP problem. The method has been tested on two test systems: Garver 6-bus system and IEEE 30-bus system. The results are compared to the unified solution of the problem formulation to show the consequent improvements from Benders decomposition.