Tabu Search Applied to Transmission Expansion Planning Considering Losses and Interruption Costs

Heuristic methods have demonstrated the potential to and good feasible solutions, but not necessarily optimal. The success of such methods is related to their ability of avoiding local minima by exploring the basic structure of each particular problem. These methods can provide high quality solutions, within an acceptable CPU time, even for large-scale problems. This paper presents a new methodology to solve the transmission expansion planning (TEP) problem based on tabu search, but other heuristics are also used to assist the optimization process. The TEP problem includes the search for the least cost solution, bearing in mind investments, transmission losses and interruption costs. Also, the dynamic nature of the TEP will be accounted. Case studies on a small test system and on a Brazilian sub-transmission network are presented and discussed.