Planning for integration of wind power capacity in power generation using stochastic optimization

Demand for energy is constantly rising worldwide whereas most conventional sources of energy are depleting. Environmental issues such as excessive greenhouse gas emissions impose additional constraints on the energy industry across the globe. Therefore, raising the share of clean sources of energy in power generation is of paramount importance. Wind power has specifically attracted large-scale investments in recent years since wind power is inherently ample, widely distributed and comes with minimal environmental impact. Wind, and consequently wind generated power are stochastic in nature. Therefore, wind energy is generally used in combination with fuel-based power to maintain reliability. Obviously, designing a reliable and efficient network of several power generation sources requires capacity planning. In this paper, a probabilistic optimization model is proposed for this purpose. The stochastic model uses a combination of recourse and chance-constrained approaches to assign optimal capacities to several sources of power generation including wind. Demand and wind generated power are both assumed stochastic and possibility of energy storage, importation and exportation are also considered in the network. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.