Boosting renewable hosting capacity via TCSC-enhanced transmission system planning: P-robust stochastic approach

The growing integration of renewable energy into modern power systems requires advanced planning methods to maintain reliability and resilience, especially during extreme weather events. This paper presents a new planning framework that optimizes the integration of renewables by strategically dividing the power grid into self-sufficient zones. The framework introduces two key innovations. First, it uses a power flow control device (Thyristor-Controlled Series Capacitor or TCSC) to dynamically adjust the electrical connections within the grid, creating fewer but stronger and more manageable zones that can better accommodate renewable sources like wind farms (WF) and photovoltaic (PV). Second, it employs a robust decision-making approach, entitled p-robust optimization, to effectively manage the uncertainties from variable renewable generation and dynamic electricity demand, ensuring that the planning decisions remain reliable even under worst-case scenarios. Tested on a standard IEEE 30-bus system, the results indicate that the method reduces the number of necessary grid partitions by 7.3 % while boosting the system's capacity to host renewable energy by 18.4 %. The optimization method also lowers a key measure of operational risk by 41.2 %, which makes the grid design more stable and reliable.