Network reliability assessment towards long term planning

Abstract

Long term planning models provide plausible options to meet the upcoming energy consumption. Focusing on the electrical sector, we argue that a suitable representation of dynamic dissipative processes over the electrical network is central to a relevant evaluation of supply structures. We introduce the notions of conveying and reliability losses and their qualitative impacts on power transmission. In order to assess network reliability, we propose a methodology to exhibit the level of losses associated with a given level of reliability, whether generation capacities are centralized or decentralized. Our methodology is based on a thermodynamic description of the electric system and lumps it as a "one-loop grid". It provides the amount of reactive power and kinetic reserve needed to ensure network reliability and to face admissible load fluctuations. These synthetic results and their theoretical background are an important step toward including reliability requirements in long term planning models.