The Long-Term Power System Evolution – First Optimisation Results

Abstract

The volatile character of the renewable generation plus the fluctuating demand, implicate challenges regarding a stable operation of the power system. To balance generation and demand on temporal and spatial basis, flexibility is required, which can be supplied by different sources, like interconnection of heat and electricity sector, increased grid exchange capacities between generation and demand regions or backup and storage power capacities of different sizes and time scales. Different optimisation approaches for future energy scenarios have already been investigated before by numerous researchers.We present first results from a novel method which has been developed at RWTH Aachen University and is incorporated into the GENESYS optimisation tool. The updated tool is capable of optimising investments during a long-term evolution period between today and a future time (e.g. 2050), while simulating the operation of all power system elements on an hourly scale. The calculation is demonstrated on a scenario of Europe including several countries. The current structure of the power system has been parameterised with remaining runtimes of thermal power plants according to political roadmaps. CO2 emission targets, as well as techno-economic developments of the system components follow exogenous boundaries. The results show, on a national aggregated level, the system development and dispatch. The system configuration, however, changes on an annual basis due to the optimised investments in new generation, storage or transmission capacities during the considered period. The optimisation variables are the installation rates per year of each technology component for each region and can be optimised and their range can be set independently. This defines the path of evolution towards a sustainable system in 2050. The optimisation target is achieved by minimizing the capital investment and operational expenditure of the system over the investigated period via annuity calculation for each simulation year.In this paper, first results based on the novel method are presented and analysed.