An effective DP solution for optimal generation expansion planning under new environment

Under the existing electricity market in Japan, partial retail wheeling in a power generation system has been implemented accompanying the independent power producers' (IPPs) tender for the part of electric power generation of a utility. At same time, the environmental problem (CO/sub 2/ emission etc) is becoming a more and more important task to solve. For utility companies, the IPPs' participation and environmental impact should be considered simultaneously when making an optimal generation expansion plan under new environment. This paper discusses the probability of IPPs' participant for a utility company and proposes an approach for determining the optimal generation mix including IPPs under limited CO/sub 2/ emission. Based on the successive approximations DP (SADP) algorithm, an optimal generation expansion plan including IPPs, which coordinates the economy and supply reliability is obtained. The feasibility of the proposed approach is demonstrated by using a test power system.