a less-effort method for spatial network planning

This paper presents a method to solve spatial network planning (snp) in power systems expansion. snp is an integration of transmission expansion planning (tep) and optimal line routing problems. in fact, snp considers the impacts of lines routing on the network power  flow. therefore, it can exploit such impactsto attain a signicant technoeconomic solution. in this work, a preprocess stage is employed to reduce the computational eort demanded by line routing. furthermore, a metaheuristic algorithm is engaged to solve such a complicated problem. applying these modications made it possible to solve snp for largescale systems with highresolution rasterized maps. the proposed method is applied to a 3-bus system, an 18-bus test system as well as the original and modied versions of the iran southeast highvoltage transmission network to demonstrate the capability of the proposed methodology.