Wind power investment within a market environment

Within an existing transmission network, this paper considers the problem of identifying the wind power plants to be built by a wind power investor to maximize its profit. For this analysis a future target year is considered and the loads at different buses are represented by stepwise load–duration curves. The stochastic nature of both load and wind is represented via scenarios. The considered electric energy system operates under a pool-market arrangement and each producer/consumer is paid/pays the Local Marginal Price (LMP) of the bus at which it is located. The higher the wind penetration is, the lower the resulting LMPs. To tackle this problem a stochastic bilevel model is proposed, whose upper-level represents the wind investment and operation decisions with the target of maximizing profits; and its lower-level represents the market clearing under differing load and wind conditions and provides LMPs. This model can be recast as a mixed-integer linear programming problem solvable using commercially available branch-and-cut solvers. The proposed model is illustrated using an example and two case studies.