Regulatory Impacts on Distributed Generation and Upstream Transmission Substation Expansion Planning: A Novel Stochastic Bi-level Model

In this paper, a novel framework is proposed to study impacts of regulatory incentive on distributed generation (DG) investment in sub-transmission substations, as well as upgrading of upstream transmission substations. Both conventional and wind power technologies are considered here. Investment incentives are fuel cost, firm contracts, capacity payment and investment subsidy relating to wind power. The problem is modelled as a bi-level stochastic optimization problem, where the upper level consists of investor's decisions maximizing its own profit. Both market clearing and decision on upgrading of transmission substation aiming at minimizing the total cost are considered in the lower level. Due to non-convexity of the lower level and impossibility of converting to single level problem (i.e. mathematical programming with equilibrium constraints (MPEC)), an algorithm combing enumeration and mathematical optimization is used to tackle with the non-convexity. For each upgrading strategy of substations, a stochastic MPEC, converted to a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) is solved. The proposed model is examined on a six-bus and an actual network. Numerical studies confirm that the proposed model can be used for analysing investment behaviour of DGs and substation expansion.