Multistage transmission expansion planning via network partitioning and principal variables identification

This paper presents a method to solve multistage transmission expansion planning problem (MTEP) for highly complex systems. The method includes three partition criteria to separate the transmission network into several subsystems and four active power injection mechanisms to keep information from the interaction between subsystems. A principal variables identification process is applied to each subsystem in order to modify the limits of addition of new elements according to the significance of each right-of-way. These new limits are used to solve the MTEP for the original network, which now has a reduced search space. The MTEP is represented by an efficient version of the linear disjunctive model (DM). The obtained results show an outstanding performance in terms of quality of the answer and computation time. The best solutions known for complex test systems are improved thanks to this method.