Multicriteria Decision Analysis in Geographic Information Systems for Identifying Ideal Locations for New Substations

The location of a new substation is a key factor in the expansion of electrical distribution systems. This location is strategic from the point of view of the costs associated with energy supply; therefore, a holistic and integral planning of sub-transmission and primary distribution subsystems requires the development of suitable optimization methods to support the decision process. Although future electric load growth is a critical factor to define capacity and location of new substations, other technical, environmental, soil characteristics, risk, social, and administrative criteria that influence the final location are also crucial. A multicriteria decision analysis based on geographic information system is proposed in this paper to combine those criteria taking into account decision makers' preferences and physical restrictions on land use. The main contributions of this paper are the identification of the criteria and the analysis of service areas in existing substations to impose constraints on the problem. A spatial heat map that facilitates the visual interpretation of the spatial relations of the criteria is produced based on a suitability score. The proposed method was evaluated in the service area of an Ecuadorian distribution energy utility. It was found that the two more important criteria are the electric load density and the distance to subtransmission network with weights of 44% and 23%, respectively. The proposed analysis is able to identify ideal locations for new substations, which can be used by the planner to find the best long-term network expansion alternative.