Determination of Optimal Expansion Strategy in Planning Power Plants Considering Restructured Power Industry

Nowadays, in regards to the increasing development of countries, power industry is taken into account as an imperative for economic growth in such a way that without planning the development of power grids, the progress of industries as the most important factor in the development of countries, terminates. Apart from economic issues, from strategic and military viewpoints, as well, and considering the occurrence of incidents, disasters, wars and military attack, we can conclude that optimal and reliable operation of power systems is contingent upon the conditions in which the planning of different parts of power system is efficiently accomplished. In this paper, at first a comprehensive emission constrained generation expansion planning (GEP) model is presented considering the electric industry restructuring, and then optimal investment decisions are determined from a generation company perspective, while the dispersal of generating units and fuel mix ratio are also considered in expansion strategies for energy generation security. To solve the optimization problem, the particle swarm optimization technique is employed and obtained results affirm the fact that applying environmental regulations to the power sector as well as incorporating the strategic viewpoint into the planning problems result in renewable-based generation units and units with less emission.