PLANEJAMENTO DA EXPANS O DE SISTEMAS DE TRANSMISS O DE ENERGIA ELéTRICA COM BUSCA EM VIZINHAN A VARIáVEL

The static long-term power transmission network expansion planning problem consists in, given an initial configuration and the generation data and demand of the planning horizon, operation limits, costs and investment restrictions, to determine the expansion plan with a minimal cost, in other words, should be determined where and what type of equipments should be correctly installed for the system to operate assisting the needs of the electric power market. It is an integer nonlinear problem with high complexity for systems of great load, presenting the phenomenon of combinatorial explosion and with the added difficulty of being multimodal, then being too complex to be solved by traditional optimization techniques. To solve this problem we applied the metaheuristic Variable Neighborhood Search, which is based on a simple beginning: Systematic changes of neighborhood within a local search. We present obtained results using available nets of medium sized networks available in the literature, which show that this metaheuristic is robust and competitive both in terms of quality and processing time.