Abstract
The phenomena of climatic variability such as El Nino affect the expansion planning of electricity supply systems with hydroelectric power plants due to the uncertainty presented in the variables of rainfall patterns, temperature, wind, solar radiation changes, among others. The El Nino affects the electricity generation in Colombia, Venezuela and northwestern Brazil due to severe droughts that reduce water flows in rivers and water volume in dams. While in Peru, Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay, Argentina and southern Brazil, causes heavy rains that lead to an increase in reservoirs. Recent findings provide sufficient evidence on how climate change modifies the patterns of duration, frequency and intensity of El Nino and therefore will introduce additional uncertainties to the expansion planning of electricity generation systems in countries that uses predominantly hydroelectric power. The vulnerability of electricity supply systems with a significant participation of hydroelectric power plants in Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, Canada, Norway, Costa Rica and New Zealand is associated with fluctuations in the availability of water resources. This document aims to analyze the current plans for the expansion of electric power generation systems by the aforementioned countries in the context of climate change in medium and long term. Additionally, this document provides a detailed analysis of the situation of electricity supply systems in Colombia.
Highlights
In recent decades, hydroelectric power plants were built to take advantage of abundant water resources to generate electricity
Electricity supply systems involving hydroelectric power plants are prone to prolonged variations in precipitation and temperature patterns
This review focuses on countries that generate more than fifty percent (50%) of energy with hydroelectric power plants
Summary
Hydroelectric power plants were built to take advantage of abundant water resources to generate electricity. Electricity supply systems involving hydroelectric power plants are prone to prolonged variations in precipitation and temperature patterns. Due to the problems described above, the generation system expansion planning must seek the appropriate way to expand the generation systems according to technical and economic considerations to meet the electricity demand at medium and long term. It should be noted that the greatest complexity of planning the electrical system in the long term is the uncertainty that exists in two ways. Those ways are from the demand side and from the supply side, seen in terms of the inclusion of new capacity to the system.
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