Least cost generation expansion planning for a regional electricity board in India considering green house gas mitigation

Thermal power plants dominate electric power generation in India, which are the major contributor to green house gases (GHGs). Carbon dioxide is by far the most important greenhouse gas that causes global warming. This study offers valuable insight on the cost-effective efficient technologies available for GHG mitigation that need to be adopted in the power generation expansion plan. GHG emission is used as an additional constraint in the generation expansion planning. The role of supply side options has been analyzed towards the mitigation of GHG (only CO₂) and other harmful gases (NO_x and SO₂) taking the input data for the Northern Regional Electricity Board (NREB) network in India. The study covers utility planning implications, cost and pricing implications, and environmental implications of the considered cases. The integrated resource planning and analyses (IRPA) package developed by AIT and CPLEX software has been used for getting the least cost optimal generation expansion plan