A Generalized Unit Commitment and Economic Dispatch Approach for Analysing the Polish Power System under High Renewable Penetration

The achievement of carbon neutrality requires a deep transformation of the Polish power sector. This paper analyses the impact of increased electricity generation from wind and solar technologies envisaged in the newest version of the Energy Policy of Poland until 2040 on the operation of dispatchable generators in 2030. The analysis was carried out using the Model of Economic Dispatch and Unit commitment for System Analysis (MEDUSA) model, which solves a mixed integer problem related to unit commitment and economic dispatch in electrical power production. At first, the model was validated based on the real operation data from 2018. Next, five scenarios were built to analyse the operation of the system in 2030. The overall result of the study is that the safest solution from the point of view of power system stability is to extend the decommissioning of coal units of 200 and 300 MW classes, to invest in renewable energy sources (RES) according to the energy policy, to build new gas power plants with the total capacity of ca. 4 GW, and to enforce Demand Side Management (DSM) programs for shifting the electrical load. The proposed framework for the optimization of power system planning helps to avoid wrong investment decisions that would have a negative impact on energy prices.