Cost Effective Design of Extra High Voltage Transmission Lines for Minimizing Transmission Congestion Problems

In Country like India having dense population, laying down new transmission lines is a great challenge. Also country being on fast track development mode, there is unceasing demand of electricity due to ever increasing industrialization. With advent of Extra and Ultra High Voltage transmission lines, corridor width for transmission lines can be reduced significantly. This paper describes utilization of a novel objective function for optimizing the structural design of Extra High Voltage transmission lines. Right of way for transmission lines are decided based on the effects of electromagnetic fields and corona effects in vicinity of the transmission lines. Objective function developed here takes into account the combined effects of electromagnetic fields to optimize design of transmission line tower structure. With compaction of towers further Right of way reduces leading to cost benefits in land procurement. A real time case of a transmission line situated in Gujarat is considered for validating the results of Optimization algorithm developed by authors. MATLAB has been used as programming platform for mathematical modeling as well as a platform for developing GUI that facilitates plotting of fields in vicinity of transmission lines in 2D and 3D environment. Genetic Algorithm coding is used to solve the optimization problem. Significant cost benefits and compactness in transmission tower structure is achievable as is clear from the results shown in this paper. This optimization algorithm can be extended for Ultra High Voltage lines also.