Highly-efficient single-level robust transmission expansion planning approach applicable to large-scale renewable energy integration

Robust transmission expansion planning (RTEP) approaches are crucial for addressing the uncertainty associated with renewable energy sources (RESs). However, existing methods often yield overly conservative solutions and exhibit low computational efficiency, especially when dealing with a large number of RES units. To overcome these limitations, we propose a simplified single-level RTEP framework based on scenarios captured in advance from historical data by searching the vertices of a convex hull. These scenarios, referred to as robust scenarios, are guaranteed to produce robust solutions that are consistent with the traditional two-stage adaptive robust TEP (ARTEP) approach in terms of robustness and optimality. Finally, the speed for solving the single-level model is increased by applying a probability-based method to determine the odds of the robust scenarios being the worst-case scenario. Numerical results obtained for the Garver 6-bus system, the IEEE 118-bus system, and the Polish 2383-bus system demonstrate that the proposed approach saves 91.71 %, 93.39 %, and 98.84 % of the required computational time, respectively, compared to the ARTEP approach.