Urban underground network expansion planning

The authors describe a three step approach to expansion planning of high voltage (HV) urban underground distribution networks. Although the techniques are specifically oriented to underground systems, they are equally applicable to overhead system design. The fundamental engineering problem is how to connect individual high voltage to low voltage substations (HV/LV SS) and zone HV SS into a future urban underground network. The problem is to rearrange the HV network to minimise the cost of expansion subject to provision of an alternative supply, specified load transfer among the neighbouring zone SS, and other general planning constraints such as feeder capacity, voltage regulation, operational requirements and losses. A review of the current state of the art of distribution expansion planning is provided. The normal manual approach is discussed together with more recent research into computer methods. Three lines of computer research are identified and classified as radially constrained, security constrained and utilisation of travelling salesman/vehicle routing problem algorithms (TSP/VRP). The TSP/VRP line of research has been extended here to produce practical techniques for the assistance of network planners.