Transmission expansion planning considering Probabilistic Risk Assessment : Implemented at Swedish National Grid

Abstract: Svenska kraftnät (Swedish National Grid) is the transmission system operator in Sweden and is responsible for maintaining and developing the Swedish transmission grid. One of the tasks included in this responsibility is transmission expansion planning, which means analyzing and planning the capacity in the future transmission grid for the requested load and generation. Historically, the N-1-criterion has been used to evaluate the reliability in transmission grid expansion planning. This criterion is deterministic, which means that all failures in the grid are considered equally, regardless of the differences in probability. In a system with an increased share of intermittent energy sources and load, it is increasingly demanding to plan and build a system that is N-1-secure in all situations. Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) is a complementing method that takes the probability and consequence of different faults into consideration. The possible benefits of using PRA are higher utilization of the power grid, greater system operating flexibility, better support for system planning, and an overall optimization of socio-economic benefits. In this master thesis project, a method for PRA in transmission expansion planning at Svenska kraftnät is proposed. The method consists of three steps: generation of operating states, contingency analysis, and reliability assessment. Historical frequency and duration of faults in the transmission grid are used to estimate the probability of different contingencies. The method results in three reliability measures for the system: expected energy not supplied (MWh/year), expected duration of outages (h/year), and expected duration of overloads (h/year). The three reliability measures are combined into a composite comparison index, which can be used to compare different alternatives in transmission expansion planning. The proposed method is tested on a PSS/E model of the Swedish transmission grid and 14 different operating states. Four different investment alternatives are analyzed, including changes in load and generation, and grid reinforcements. The conclusion is that the proposed method is a useful tool for power system analysis at Svenska kraftnät and that the process for generating the operating states must be further developed.