Combined Subtransmission Substation and Network Expansion Planning Using Genetic Algorithm, Ant Colony algorithm, and hybrid Ant Colony and Genetic Algorithm

This research presents new algorithms for subtransmission simultaneous substation and network expansion planning. Given an existing system model, the projected load growth in a target year and various system expansion options, the algorithms find the optimal mix of system expansion options to minimize the cost function subject to various system constraints and single contingencies on lines and transformers.The system expansion options considered include building new subtransmission lines/substations, the capacity to be upgraded and the service area of HV/MV substations. In this research, Genetic Algorithm (GA) with new coding, Ant Colony algorithm (AC) and hybrid Ant Colony and Genetic Algorithm (AC&GA) methods are employed. The optimization results are compared with successive elimination method to demonstrate the performance improvement.