The effect of massive renewable deployment on the Sardinian power system

The paper is a follow up of a Research Project financed by the European Commission¹ to study the influence of a large penetration of renewable energy sources (RES) on the EHV/HV electrical grids in Europe. The same authors performed a comparable analysis in the last years. But, the sudden RES increase and the simultaneous reduction of the electric demand due to the recession caused by the economic crisis that involved Italy induced authors to update the research with new studies. The case study proposed in the paper refers to a portion of the Italian grid, the Sardinian power system, interconnected to the Italian mainland with high voltage direct current (HVDC) submarine cables. Sardinia is one of the most favorable Italian regions for the exploitation of wind and solar energy, and it has been experiencing a great increment of wind power production. In the paper, the models to predict at 2030 the generation park, demand profiles, as well as the development of the electricity infrastructures in Sardinia are briefly described. The steady-state analysis of the Sardinian grid with AC Power Flow studies applied to the foreseen load and generation scenario in 2030 allowed identifying critical conditions of the grid caused by the not programmable production in a context of a decreasing demand.