  One of the essential aspects of power system planning is generation expansion
planning (GEP). The purpose of GEP is to enhance construction planning and
reduce the costs of installing different types of power plants. This paper
proposes a method based on Genetic Algorithm (GA) for GEP in the presence of
wind power plants. Since it is desired to integrate the maximum possible wind
power production in GEP, the constraints for incorporating different levels of
wind energy in power generation are investigated comprehensively. This will
allow obtaining the maximum reasonable amount of wind penetration in the
network. Besides, due to the existence of different wind regimes, the
penetration of strong and weak wind on GEP is assessed. The results show that
the maximum utilization of wind power generation capacity could increase the
exploitation of more robust wind regimes. Considering the growth of the wind
farm industry and the cost reduction for building wind power plants, the
sensitivity of GEP to the variations of this cost is investigated. The results
further indicate that for a 10% reduction in the initial investment cost of
wind power plants, the proposed model estimates that the overall cost will be
minimized.
