Optimization of AC Transmission System Planning

This paper presents a mixed-integer optimization approach for transmission system planning with an AC network model. The approach makes use of the conic programming relaxation of the optimal power flow problem to define a disjunctive program that takes into account both the network power flow and the voltage limits. The proposed mixed-integer optimization program has a convex relaxation and can be solved using a branch-and-cut algorithm. Planning results show that the method produces solutions that satisfy the AC network model constraints without further reinforcement and are at less cost as compared to solutions reported in the literature.