Cost and emission additionality of wind energy in power systems

Abstract

Abstract Wind energy is one of the fastest growing renewable energy source (RES) to achieve energy sustainability. The existing literature is unanimous in accepting that introduction of wind energy into the power system has profound impact on power system operation more so when the penetration level is higher. In spite of this, very few attempts have been made to quantify the impact of power systems on the wind farm operation especially on the benefits of wind integration generally specified in terms of additionality and contribution to sustainable development. The term additionality here pertains to both financial and emission aspects where the impact of a wind project is compared to certain baseline scenarios as in Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The aim of the current work is to study the impact of power systems on the cost and emission additionality of the wind farms. For this purpose three different sets of thermal generators are considered in IEEE 30 bus test system and wind farms is integrated in each of the generator systems. It is shown that the location of wind farm and the existing generator characteristics have profound impact on the additionality of wind farms. The scalability of the proposed approach is demonstrated in IEEE 118 bus 54 generator system. The approach presented in this work is novel and can be extended for quantifying the impact of power systems on more sustainability indicators of wind energy.