Transmission Line Route Refinement via Optimal k-Segment Polyline Approximation

This work formulates the transmission line route smoothing problem as an instance of the Optimal k-Segment Polyline Approximation problem. This is a necessary step in constructing routes for electrical engineering projects, reducing total deployment costs and resulting in more realistic engineering designs.
The proposed algorithm is tested on a real 230 kV transmission line project in the state of Rio Grande do Sul with various values of k, a parameter that defines the number of changes in direction of the route. The result is a polyline with exactly k direction changes that minimizes the geometric error relative to the LCP route, with guaranteed optimality. The results show a large reduction in the number of vertices and in the sum of deflection