Simulation modeling framework to assess renewable based electric power system

Renewable resources importance has been highlighted for energy system sustainability and environmental protection since last 15 to 20 years. But their integration into electric power system is a challenging task due to their intermittent nature. Power system with renewables required simulation at small time scale to increase the confidence level and prepare a convincing plan. Work has been done to develop a modeling framework that could be used to simulate and assess the possibility of 100% renewable based electric power system in a region (i.e. State, Country, continent etc.). The user can divide the region into subregions, and each subregion may have as many supply projects as desired. The division helps to estimate the infrastructure requirement for electric power transmission among subregions and estimate system total cost. In the framework, supply options considered are wind, solar, hydro (run of river, reservoir type and pump storages) and biomass. The time resolution used is “hour” and the user needs to provide same level input data for demand and resources. The calculation are performed to find electric balance including; i) generation ii) consumption and iii) import/ export for each subregion in each hour of the year. In addition, the framework calculates parameters relevant to the resources and storages installation requirement and utilization. The results obtained can be used to estimate the total financial requirement for implementation.