Transmission Expansion Planning in Competitive Electricity Markets Using AC OPF

Transmission expansion planning (TEP) is one of the most important parts of expansion planning in power systems. Competition in these systems has resulted in essential changes in TEP models and criteria. While methods introduced so far are essentially based on DC load flow, the proposed method utilizes the AC optimal power flow (OFF) in order to model the real world condition and obtaining optimal plans. Furthermore, in order to model the operation and investment cost, transmission tariffs are used. Investigation on 8-bus system confirms the advantages of the proposed method as compared with previously presented approaches