Transmission expansion planning by using DC and AC models and particle swarm optimization

The Transmission Expansion Planning (TEP) entails to determine all the changes needed in the electric transmission system infrastructure in order to allow the balance between the projected demand and the power supply, at minimum investment and operational costs. In some type of TEP studies, the DC model is used for the medium and long term time frame, while the AC model is used for the short term. This chapter proposes a load shedding based TEP formulation using the DC and AC model, and four Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) based algorithms applied to the TEP problem: Global PSO, Local PSO, Evolutionary PSO, and Adaptive PSO. Comparisons among these PSO variants in terms of robustness, quality of the solution, and number of function evaluations are carried out. Tests, detailed analysis, guidelines, and particularities are shown in order to apply the PSO techniques for realistic systems.