Territory Concept to Improve Transmission Expansion Planning Problem Solution Algorithms

This paper is devoted to solve transmission expansion planning (TEP) problems, via a constructive heuristic algorithm (CHA) that can be employed as a sub-routine in a meta-heuristic procedure. In such a strategic methodology, CHA may improve the quality of trial solutions that speed up the convergence of the main algorithm. By introducing a “territory concept” for each derived local optimum, this paper proposes an approach, forcing CHA sub-procedures to explore new areas in the problem sub-space. Such modification is enforced to Villasana-Garver-Salon (VGS) algorithm, as a well-known kind of CHA, to improve its performance. The improved VGS is called territory-based VGS (TBVGS). In order to evaluate the performance of TBVGS, it is implemented on a meta-heuristic algorithm in which the performance of the obtained meta-heuristic algorithm is examined with different standard test systems as well as practical cases. Simulation studies and results analysis show a promising improvement caused in computational efficiency of the algorithm and even more important, finding a higher quality set of TEP local optimums.