Research Area:  Metaheuristic Computing
The optimal expansion planning (OEP) is considered as a mathematical problem that aims to find the optimal combination of different generators, energy devices, and transmission lines based on a specific objective function. This problem has been extensively studied for many years. This paper investigates an approach for OEP for a single energy hub with different energy infrastructures including electricity, gas, and heating systems. It is assumed that the hub consists of a transformer and variable numbers of combined heat and power units (CHPs) and furnaces that are responsible for providing electricity and heat loads during a given time period. The hub also receives wood chips, natural gas, and electricity as its input. Both total energy cost and emission (air pollution) are used as the objective of the optimization problem. Unscented transformation is applied for modeling the uncertainty and the correlation between heat and electricity loads. The problem is modeled first as a constrained optimization problem and then converted to an unconstrained problem using the Lagrange method. The modified bird mating optimizer is utilized to solve the optimization problem which led to optimal values of input powers and also optimum number of equipment (e.g., furnace and CHP).
Keywords:  
optimal expansion planning
mathematical problem
energy devices
transmission line
objective function
electricity
gas
heating systems
Author(s) Name:  Kourosh Amiri, Taher Niknam
Journal name:   Iranian Journal of Science and Technology, Transactions of Electrical Engineering
Conferrence name:  
Publisher name:  Springer
DOI:  10.1007/s40998-018-0138-5
Volume Information:  43, pages 517–526
Paper Link:   https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40998-018-0138-5