Ant colony based transmission expansion developed for the Nordic Area and Great Britain

This paper presents an improved algorithm for transmission expansion planning based on ant colony optimization, which is a heuristic optimization method showing several advantages compared to traditional methods. A grid model for the Nordic Area, Great Britain and a combination of both are used to show the performance of the optimization process. The focus of the work is to develop a tool for transmission expansion, especially regarding the new challenge of integrating large on- and offshore wind power. The results show that the algorithm is capable to deliver good solutions for relatively large systems up to several hundred buses, lines and generators.