Influence of thermal plants cycling costs in the economic balance of renewables in Portugal

November 5, 2018

The main focus of this work is to evaluate if the cycling costs of the Portuguese thermal plants increased with the escalation of electricity produced from renewable energy sources, particularly variable sources, in the power system over the years, and to frame these costs in the total renewable overcosts. Then, these are compared with the total economic benefits from renewables. The work is important since there is still an argument used in disproval of renewable energies based on the cycling costs, which claims that these are unsupportable. It adds value since there are no previous works evaluating the cycling costs of each thermal plant in the Portuguese power system, and also by doing a quantification of the economic benefits of the renewable energy. Two models were developed for this, one in which evaluation of the cycling costs is done, and another to quantify the economic benefits. The results of these illustrated that the cycling costs represented less than 1% of the total renewable overcosts in the year analysed. It is concluded that the cycling costs did rose between the years analysed but are insignificant when compared both with the total overcosts and economic benefits.

Authors in the community:

• 

  P

  Paulo André Silva da Ponte

  ist175755

Supervisors of this institution:

• 

  R

  Rui Manuel Gameiro de Castro

  ist12375

electrical-engineering-electronic-engineering-information-engineering - Electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering

por - Portuguese

Instituto Superior Técnico