Tradeoffs in planning renewable power generation entry to the electricity market

Renewable intensive bulk power system planning and operation considerations are getting high importance due to huge pressure imposed by environment-friendly policies and uncertainties in the fossil-fuel based investments. This paper addresses a number of influential economic and reliability issues for renewable generation entry to a deregulated electricity market. Geothermal power penetration, wind intermittency, load volatility, price variation and dynamic bidding are considered here in the optimal power flow simulation. A modified IEEE-RTS is simulated, through MATPOWER/MATLAB and CRUSE software, while considering the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM) data for generation technologies and costs. Locational marginal prices, system minutes and Expected Energy Not Supplied (EENS) are presented here considering gas, wind, geothermal and geothermal/wind generation-mix. The simulation results confirm high potential of geothermal power as a new generation entry to the Australian NEM.