Stochastic multi‐stage joint expansion planning of transmission system and energy hubs in the presence of correlated uncertainties

Deployment of Energy Hubs (EHs) across the power grid can alleviate the Transmission System (TS) capacity and substitute the conventional fossil fuel‐based thermal units. Therefore, this paper presents a tri‐level multi‐stage Joint Expansion Planning of the Transmission system and EHs (JEPT&EHs). In this approach, the Cholesky decomposition technique combined with the Nataf transformation is applied to make the uncertain input parameters correlated. Then, the k‐means data‐clustering method is employed to reduce the initial correlated samples. In the first level, the Transmission System Operator (TSO) optimizes the planning and scheduling strategies associated with the TS capacity requirements and operation costs of the conventional generators. In the second level, the financers specify the expansion of the EHs based on the Locational Marginal Prices (LMPs). In the third level, the Direct Current Optimal Power Flow (DCOPF) is determined to update the LMPs by the Independent System Operator (ISO). The optimization problem is an Equilibrium Problem with Equilibrium Constraints (EPEC) since there are multiple financers across the TS. The proposed model is implemented on the IEEE standard 30 bus TS to present the effectiveness of the EHs' deployment and the impact of the correlations in the total costs of the TSO and financers. This paper presents a tri‐level multi‐stage Joint expansion planning of the transmission system and energy hubs (JEPT&EHs).