Methodological basis to decide short-term investments in distribution systems under uncertainty in performance-based regulatory frameworks

This paper presents new concepts and methodological tools to decide the investments that electric distribution utilities must perform under regulatory frameworks based on performance (Performance Based Regulation or PBR). The proposal is focused on short-term investments. In this work, the subject of hierarchical expansion planning and the basis for an investment decision methodology are presented. Furthermore, the uncertainties to be considered in the problem are indicated and uncertainty representation by means of Type-2 Fuzzy Numbers (T2-FN) is proposed due to the fact that T2-FN, besides modelling the uncertainties in quantitative form, can model uncertainties associated to expert knowledge of qualitative characteristics. System diagnosis and identification of problem areas are considered and it is proposed to classify these areas by using performance indices, then the possible short-term investments are analysed. Finally, a profit-cost and risk analysis for a high-priority investment classification are proposed.