Transmission Planning for Wind Energy: Status and Prospects

2009 IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting, 2009

Brazil presents a remarkable potential for the development of renewable energies. Besides large-scale hydro plants, the wind power plants, small hydros and cogeneration from sugarcane bagasse are the mainstream options. These sources have increased their participation in the country's energy matrix due to their attractive characteristic such as smaller environmental impact and lower construction periods (in general less than 3 years), which is suitable in a context of an uncertain load growth, since it offers an attractive option and mitigates the associated risks. The development of these resources requires the availability of a transmission system sufficiently robust in order to allow the flow of the electricity produced by these resources. Because these plants are distributed geographically over a large (dispersed) area, their connection to the transmission grid is complex. In order to turn feasible the connection of these plants, a complex and integrated technical and regulatory scheme of planning and pricing of transmission-distribution networks was developed. The objective of this work is to present and discuss the technical and regulatory questions associated to the connection of renewables in the Brazilian power system and what has been proposed to address these issues.

… Energy, 2008

The 2001/77/CE Renewable Energies European Directive together with Kyoto Protocol ratification supported by a government vision and strong objective on the reduction of external oil dependence put Portugal in the front line to achieve one of the highest wind energy penetrations within 10 years' time. This paper gives a summarized overview of the Portuguese technical approaches and methodologies followed in order to plan and accommodate the ambitious wind power goals to 2010/2013, preserving the overall quality of the power system.

IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 2019

The renewable energy production suffered very much in Romania, being practically stopped since a couple of years, because of legislative changes made "during the game". Beside the main steps of wind power plant planning, identifying locations with good wind potential, the design of the wind park layout, choosing the best wind turbine type for the given locations, proximity to the transmission/distribution network and other technical features, the legislation in the electricity production from RES will have to ensure economical feasible support scheme, in a predictive legislative framework. The present paper presents possible scenarios for the development of the Romanian RES market at the horizon of 2030, strongly related to the direction that the policy transposes in the legislation.

Energy, 2014

Spatio-temporal generation patterns for wind and solar photovoltaic power in Europe are used to investigate the future rise in transmission needs with an increasing penetration of the variable renewable energy sources (VRES) on the pan-European electricity system. VRES growth predictions according to the official National Renewable Energy Action Plans of the EU countries are used and extrapolated logistically up to a fully VRES-supplied power system. We find that keeping today's international net transfer capacities (NTCs) fixed over the next forty years reduces the final need for backup energy by 13 % when compared to the situation with no NTCs. An overall doubling of today's NTCs will lead to a 26 % reduction, and an overall quadrupling to a 33 % reduction. The remaining need for backup energy is due to correlations in the generation patterns, and cannot be further reduced by transmission. The main investments in transmission lines are due during the ramp-up of VRES from 15 % (as planned for 2020) to 80 %. Additionally, our results show how the optimal mix between wind and solar energy shifts from about 70 % to 80 % wind share as the transmission grid is enhanced. Finally, we exemplify how reinforced transmission affects the import and export opportunities of single countries during the VRES ramp-up.

2013

this paper presents case studies projecting European cross-border electricity transmission infrastructure requirements for a range of future European electricity system scenarios. In calculating the requirements and to attain to the least cost solution, we use a Dynamic System Investment Model. The optimization model minimizes the total investment and operating costs taking into account: (i) the coordination needed between generation and transmission investment; (ii) the need to maintain reliability and feasibility of system operation; and (iii) the applications of load control technology. The model has been used to quantify the transmission requirements for five different European future generation and demand scenarios developed in the "Infrastructure Roadmap for Energy Networks in Europe", IRENE-40, FP7 project. These include Business-as-Usual, Renewable, DESERTEC, CCS, and the High Efficiency pathways. This paper also presents a discussion on the plausible network technologies to fulfill the requirements and the potential benefits of demand side management in reducing the capacity requirements. Index Terms-renewable, optimization, transmission planning I.

Renewable Energy, 2014

The residual load and excess power generation of 27 European countries with a 100% penetration of variable renewable energy sources are explored in order to quantify the benefit of power transmission between countries. Estimates are based on extensive weather data, which allows for modelling of hourly mismatches between the demand and renewable generation from wind and solar photovoltaics. For separated countries, balancing is required to cover around 24% of the total annual energy consumption. This number can be reduced down to 15% once all countries are networked together with unconstrained interconnectors. The reduction represents the maximum possible benefit of transmission for the countries. The total Net Transfer Capacity of the unconstrained interconnectors is roughly twelve times larger than current values. However, constrained interconnector capacities six times larger than the current values are found to provide 97% of the maximum possible benefit of cooperation. This motivates a detailed investigation of several constrained transmission capacity layouts to determine the export and import capabilities of countries participating in a fully renewable European electricity system.

2011 International Conference on Clean Electrical Power (ICCEP), 2011

In this paper, a strategy is proposed in order to introduce in a realistic way wind generation into a HLII (bulk power system) non sequential Monte Carlo adequacy study with economic dispatch. Thanks to the implemented solution, wind generation is consequently confronted to operational constraints related to high powered thermal units, nuclear parks or thermal machines with technical minimum value. Moreover, during each simulated system state, a DC load flow is also calculated in order to evaluate reinforcements optimizing the large scale integration of wind power production. The simulation tool modified during the present work is called Scanner© and is the property of Tractebel Engineering (Gaz de France-Suez) company. Finally, in order to fully access the large offshore wind potential in the North Sea, the proposed simulation tool has been used to evaluate the onshore reinforcements required in the Belgian transmission network.

2004

Plans to expand the western grid are now underway. Bringing power from low-cost remote resources-including wind-to load centers could reduce costs for all consumers. But many paths appear to be already congested. Locational marginal price-based modeling is designed to identify the most cost-effective paths to be upgraded. The ranking of such paths is intended as the start of a process of political and regulatory approvals that are expected to result in the eventual construction of new and upgraded lines. This paper reviews the necessary data and analytical tasks to accurately represent wind in such modeling, and addresses some policy and regulatory issues that can help with wind integration into the grid. Providing wind fair access to the grid also (and more immediately) depends on tariff and regulatory changes. Expansion of the Rocky Mountain Area Transmission Study (RMATS) study scope to address operational issues supports the development of transmission solutions that enable wind to connect and deliver power in the next few years-much sooner than upgrades can be completed.

The Journal of Engineering, 2018

In this study, a transmission expansion planning problem is studied considering the effects of wind units on transmission congestion and power system reliability in a uniform electricity market. Market clearing price (MCP) is determined based on the maximisation of social welfare. Also, the congestion cost of a transmission system is defined as the difference between the cost of power supply before market clearing disregarding the transmission system (dispatching cost) and the operation cost of generating wind units of power suppliers considering transmission lines limit (re-dispatching cost). Dispatching cost is calculated using economic load dispatch and the re-dispatching cost is determined using optimal power flow. Moreover, the effect of wind units on transmission network reliability is studied through the relationship between wind units and lines loading and coherence between lines loading and lines failure rate. In addition, the effects of wind generation on composite transmission and generation reliability is formulated via the relationship between wind units and MCP and considering this price in loss of load and load shedding cost of customers. The proposed model is applied to the IEEE reliability test system and the results are discussed.

IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy, 2012