Power Generation Expansion Planning Including Large Scale Wind Integration: A Case Study of Oman

Many options can be effectively used to meet the future power needs of a country in ways which would be more economically viable, environmentally sound, and socially just. A least-cost generation expansion planning study is conducted to find the economic feasibility of large scale integration of wind farms in the main interconnected transmission system of Oman. The generation expansion planning software used is WASP which is restricted in its ability to model intermittent nature of wind. Therefore, a wind turbine is modeled as a thermal plant with high forced outage rate related to its capacity factor. The result of the study has shown that wind turbines are economically viable option in the overall least-cost generation expansion plan for the Main Interconnected System of Oman. 1. Introduction In the planning of a power system, it is essential to estimate the operating cost and reliability of the system. To make these estimations, it is important to model the system load and generation units in an appropriate way. Power system planning is made up of the electrical load forecast, generation planning, and electrical network planning [1, 2]. The electrical load forecast forms the basis of power system planning and provides information on expected consumption increase, load curve profiles, and load distribution. The result of generation planning and electrical network can also conversely exert an influence on electrical load curve or distribution via marginal cost effort. In the planning process, major decisions in expansion planning of the generation system must consider alternative generating unit sizes, types of capacity, timing of addition, and locations. The main sources of uncertainty in strategic planning are forecasts of electricity demand, fuel prices and availability, availability and performance of new technology, governmental policies toward privatization and regulations, and public attitudes [3]. This paper reports a study that was aimed to find a least-cost generation expansion plan for the Main Interconnected System (MIS) of Oman considering the large scale integration of wind energy. The importance of the study is to show how wind turbines can be modeled in generation expansion planning software models that are based on load duration curve technique and that wind energy system can form part of the least-cost plan in Oman while keeping the same planning standard of minimum reserve margin and cost of unserved energy. The study is limited by its scope as no detailed investigation of wind energy sites and their true potential is estimated.