Long-term planning and characterization of Latin American electrical systems based on their resources

Abstract

Power system planning is a fundamental activity for the energy sector. Allows anticipating potential challenges, such as, supplying a growing energy demand, achieving energy policy goals, meeting environmental commitments, among others. Long-term planning studies typically have time horizons of 15 to 30 years. The result of these studies are a set of investments that meet certain requirements, including the type of technology to be installed and when they should be installed. Traditionally, one of the most common questions in long-term energy planning in systems with mediuma and high share of hydroelectric capacity is the risk of non service energy that a country is willing to take in the face of a very low probability extreme drought. In addittion, nowadays due to improvements in efficiency and costs drop of wind and solar photovoltaic generation, these technologies are very competitives, so, the variability in the short term (hours, days) should be taking into account in the energy planning process. In the medium and long term (months to years ) the variation of the energy produced by these technologies is very low. In systems with hydroelectric plants with storage capacity, the short-term fluctuations of non-conventional renewable energy (NCRE) can be mitigated by increasing hydroelectric generation when their production drops or by storing water when they are generating in abundance. In this study, the generation expansions will be carry out considering NCRE (wind and solar photovoltaic) and tradictional thermal generation (open turbines and combined clycles). In 2019, hydroelectric generation in Latin American region represented approximately 50% of the total electricity demand [1]. It is observed that most Latin American countries rainflow regime are influenced by El Niño / La Niña climatologic phenomenon. In extreme situations, this climatologic phenomenon might cause severe droughts and / or floods. The main objective of this study is to determine the optimal generation investments in systems with different shares of hydroelectric and storage capacity, considering the characteristics of wind and solar resources, hydrological flows, electricity demand and fossil fuel prices of several Latin American countries.