The increasing demand for electricity over the last few decades has not been followed by adequate growth in electric infrastructure. As a result, the reliability and safety of the electric grids are facing tremendously growing pressure. Large blackouts in the recent past indicate that sustaining system reliability and integrity turns out to be more and more difficult due to reduced transmission capacity margins and increased stress on the system. Due to the heavy loading conditions that occur when the system is under stress, the protection systems are susceptible to mis-operation. It is under such severe situations that the network cannot afford to lose its critical elements like the main generation units and transmission corridors. In addition to the slow but steady variations in the network structure over a long term, the grid also experiences drastic changes during the occurrence of a disturbance. One of the main reasons why protection relays mis-operate is due to the inability of the relays to adjust to the evolving network scenario. Such failures greatly compound the severity of the disturbance, while diminishing network integrity leading to catastrophic system-wide outages. With the advancement of Wide Area Measurement Systems (WAMS), it is now possible to redesign network protection schemes to make them more adaptive and thus improve the security of the system. Often flagged for exacerbating the events leading to a blackout, the back-up distance protection relay scheme for transmission line protection and the loss-of-field relay scheme for generator unit protection can be greatly improved from an adaptability-oriented redesign. Protection schemes in general would benefit from a power re-distribution technique that helps predict generator outputs immediately after the occurrence of a contingency. / Ph. D.

Environmental concerns and long term energy security are the key drivers behind most current electric energy policies whose primary aim is to achieve a sustainable, reliable and affordable energy system. In a bid to achieve these aims many changes have been taking place in most power systems such as emergence of new low carbon generation technologies, structural changes of power system and introduction of competition and choice in electricity supply. As a result of these changes, the level of uncertainties is growing especially on generation side where the locations and available capacities of the future generators are not quite clear-cut. The transmission network needs to be flexibly and economically robust against all these uncertainties. The traditional operation of the network under preventive control mode is an inflexible practice which increases the total system cost. Corrective control operation strategy, however, can be alternatively used to boost the flexibility, to expedite the integration of the new generators and to decrease the overall cost. In this thesis, the main focus is on development of new techniques and methodologies that can be used for modelling and solving a transmission planning problem under the assumption that post-contingency corrective actions are plausible. Three different corrective actions, namely substation switching, demand response and generation re-dispatch are investigated in this thesis. An innovative multi-layer procedure deploying a genetic algorithm is proposed to calculate the required transmission capacity while substation switching is deployed correctively to eradicate the post-fault network violations. By using the proposed approach, a numerical study shows that the network investment reduces by 6.36% in the IEEE 24 bus test system. In another original study, generation re-dispatch corrective action is incorporated into the transmission planning problem. The ramp-rate constraints of generators are taken into account so that the network may be overloaded up to its short-term thermal rating while the generation re-dispatch action is undertaken. The results show that the required network investment for the modified IEEE 24 bus test system can be reduced by 23.8% if post-fault generation re-dispatch is deployed. Furthermore, a new recursive algorithm is proposed to study the effect of price responsive demands and peak-shifting on transmission planning. The results of a study case show that 7.8% of total investment can be deferred. In an additional study on demand response, a new probabilistic approach is introduced for transmission planning in a system where direct load curtailment can be used for either balancing mechanism or alleviating the network violations. In addition, the effect of uncertainties such as wind power fluctuation and CO2 emission price volatility are taken into account by using Monte Carlo simulation and Hypercube sampling techniques. Last but not least, a probabilistic model for dynamic thermal ratings of transmission lines is proposed, using past meteorological data. The seasonal correlations between wind power and thermal ratings are also calculated. £26.7 M is the expected annual benefit by using dynamic thermal ratings of part of National Grid's transmission network.