AC and DC Transmission Line Expansion Planning Using Coronavirus Herd Immunity Optimizer

In this paper, the coronavirus herd immunity optimizer (CHIO) was applied to solve the transmission line expansion planning (TEP) problem. CHIO was examined to solve AC and DC optimal power flow-based models, which are commonly used to formulate the TEP problem. Moreover, the impact of incorporating reactive power compensator allocation and TEP was extensively studied. A benchmark system (24 bus system) and two realistic Egyptian networks (500 kV and 66 kV networks) were used for the validation of the applied technique. The results demonstrated the superiority of the implemented technique compared to some meta-heuristic techniques reported in the literature. Therefore, CHIO is highly recommended for the TEP problem and expanse the methods toolbox. Integrating reactive sources with TEP further played an effective role in reducing the total investment cost and in enhancing system efficiency.