A Methodology to Consider Combined Electrical Infrastructure and Real-Time Power-Flow Impact Costs in Planning Large-Scale Renewable Energy Farms

Abstract

The U.S federal government's strategic vision encouraging renewable energy production has motivated several new energy generation projects. Among them are large-scale renewable energy farm building efforts, where one considers the renewable resource potential along with land, equipment and installation costs. The goal in the planning phase of these efforts is to maximize the return on investment as well as the utilization of resources. The challenge, however, that is specific to integrating new generation is the need to include the operational (both construction as well as run-time) cost of introducing power to the existing infrastructure. In this paper, we propose a methodology to compute and include energy transmission line proximity (a construction time cost) and thermal-overload, and voltage out-of-range (an infrastructure cost) factors. Thus we consider both distance to infrastructure and the power-flow impacts when we plan to “tap” into an existing infrastructure. We present results for a simulation study over regions in Texas, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico and Oklahoma and discuss the observations.