This work focuses on transmission planning, which will have to change and adapt to new situations and uncertainties mostly represented by market opening from one side and renewable integration on the other side. After a review of transmission planning practices carried out by the TSOs, transmission planning criteria should be expanded to consider probabilistic approaches in order to deal with above uncertainties.
Moreover, a crucial stage of the transmission planning process, the cost-benefit analysis, needs to systematically and quantitatively assess the several advantages provided by transmission expansion in a liberalised context.
In this view, the present work develops and describes a new systemic approach to transmission planning, aiming to evaluate the different benefits not only from a single perspective but from the society point of view. For the application of this analysis a suitable power system tool has been then developed and tested.