Evaluation of transmission grid reinforcements for multiple future scenarios

The increasing share of renewable energy sources leads to necessary reinforcements in the European transmission grid. As the reinforcements are planned for a time horizon of ten years in the future uncertainties of the supply task are covered by a set of scenarios. Usually for each scenario an optimal grid development plan is determined. In the end the problem appears, how to combine the scenario individual grid development plans into one plan, which should be realized in the end. In this paper, a stochastic planning approach taking into account all scenarios at the same time for the determination of one grid development plan is presented. The method is applied for four scenarios of the German transmission grid in the year 2025. The results show that the decision for reinforcements is strongly influenced by the uncertainties. The method allows the planner to choose reinforcements minimizing the expected value of total costs.