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In many developing countries, restructuring is usually started by dividing vertically integrated power systems into regional companies. Analysis of the procedure of restructuring requires appropriate analytical tools for modeling interactive behavior of the regional companies in a competitive energy market. The problem of generation expansion planning in the competitive environment becomes more complex where the new generation units are constructed on the basis of decentralized decisions. Recent studies of long term expansion planning show that market equilibrium modeling is an effective technique to analyze the long-term optimum development of the generation systems. In the present paper, a Nash-Cournot Market Equilibrium model has been developed to predict the long-term expansion of generation system. Similar to some previous works, the conventional model has some shortcomings in practical applications and is complex due to large number of parameters and variables. Thus, to find an approximate solution for the proposed model, an algorithm based on a bi-level equilibrium method has been developed. Discounted net profit of market players has been considered as the objective function for each generation company which is to be maximized during the long term horizon. Implementation of the algorithm and its application in a case study over the southeastern power generation system of Iran has been presented. Results of case study show that the efficiency of the method in finding the equilibrium is higher than solving a complicated planning problem in competitive situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]