Generation and Transmission Expansion Planning for Renewable Energy Integration

In recent years the expansion planning problem has become increasingly complex. As expansion planning (sometimes called composite or integrated resource planning) is a non-linear and nonconvex optimization problem, researchers have traditionally focused on approximate models of power flows to solve the problem. The problem has also been split into generation expansion planning (GEP) and transmission network expansion planning (TNEP) to improve computational tractability. Until recently these approximations have produced results that are straight-forward to combine and adapt to the more complex and complete problem. However, the power grid is evolving towards a state where the adaptations are no longer easy (e.g. large amounts of limited control, renewable generation, comparable generation and transmission construction costs) and necessitates new approaches. Recent work on deterministic Discrepancy Bounded Local Search (DBLS) has shown it to be quite effective in addressing the TNEP. In this paper, we propose a generalization of DBLS to handle simultaneous generation and transmission planning.