Transmission planning in deregulated markets considering GenCos´ strategic behavior

This paper proposes a new approach for long-term transmission expansion planning, from the ISO´s point of view, in electricity markets where only the generation sector is deregulated. The strategic behavior of generation companies is simulated using the simulated annealing Q-learning technique, and the market operation is modeled. Considering the predicted system data, various likely generation expansion scenarios are evaluated by the system operator, and the most likely scenario is selected according to a predefined objective. Based on this scenario, the ISO evaluates several transmission expansion plans, and the one that maximizes the competition level in the market is selected. A small 5-bus test system is used to demonstrate the proposed approach.