ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to study the distribution expansion planning (DEP) problem considering flexibility providers. In this study, demand response providers (DRPs) are introduced as the flexibility service providers, which will play an important role besides other independent entities to satisfy the increasing electrical demand. Moreover, there are different autonomous entities with different behaviors in distribution systems whose behaviors should be modeled. It means several independent entities are playing their roles in the distribution systems with their objectives (that may conflict with the objectives of other players), while they can have interoperability with each other. Hence, an efficient modeling architecture is essential to optimally model such interactions. In this chapter, a system-of-systems (SoS) approach is proposed as an efficient framework to model the behavior of these independent entities. The SoS is an approach for modeling the collaboration of different entities with distinct objective functions, which are able to cooperate. Independent systems under the SoS framework aim at achieving their own goals. The outcome of the SoS is an optimum solution that will determine the strategies of all the entities in an optimal manner.
