COMPARATIVE-STUDIES ON NONCONVEX OPTIMIZATION METHODS FOR TRANSMISSION NETWORK EXPANSION PLANNING

We have investigated and extensively tested three families of non-conv ex optimization approaches for solving the transmission network expans ion planning problem: simulated annealing (SA), genetic algorithms (GA ), and tabu search algorithms (TS). The paper compares the main featur es of the three approaches and presents an integrated view of these me thodologies. A hybrid approach is then proposed which presents perform ances which are far better than the ones obtained with any of these ap proaches individually. Results obtained in tests performed with large scale real-life networks are summarized.