Transmission network expansion planning using a DEA-based benders decomposition

This paper presents a multistage transmission network expansion planning (TNEP) model based on a disjunctive formulation. Since the proposed TNEP model is a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problem, a renovated benders decomposition (BD) scheme entangled with a differential evolution algorithm (DEA) is applied to alleviate the computational cost of optimization problem. The solution procedure decomposes the original MILP problem into a master problem, applying a DEA to acquire potential solutions for integer programming (IP) problem, and two sub-problems, applying linear programming (LP) method to acquire potential solutions for LP problem. Over a course of successive iterations the master problem is cultivated by appending apposite cuts which are implied by sub problems. The proposed approach is applied to the north-eastern area of the Iranian power grid.