Investment Planning for Hydro-Thermal Power System Expansion: Stochastic Programming Employing the Dantzig-Wolfe Decomposition Principle

This paper presents an application of the Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition principle to the problem of investment planning in the electric power sector. The formulation of the capacity planning problem incorporates uncertainties in long-term load growth and in fuel supply availability. In addition, the formulation permits the inclusion of such demand-side investment decisions as conservation as well as conventional and renewable supply investments, and it allows flexibility in modeling system reliability. Reliability targets can be incorporated as constraints or reliability can be optimized by minimizing customer outage costs in addition to investment costs and operating costs. Results of an application to the Pacific Northwest, involving problem sizes up to 30,000 rows and 54,000 columns, are reported.