Economic Impact of Wind Generation Penetration in the Colombian Electricity Market

TL;DR

This paper examines how large-scale wind energy integration affects Colombia's electricity market, focusing on changes in generation mix, market prices, and operation of traditional plants using a unit commitment model.

Contribution

It presents a novel analysis of wind energy's economic impact on Colombia's power system, including detailed modeling of market and generation dynamics.

Findings

Wind energy introduction reduces gas-fired plant operation by up to 80%.

Hydro plants help balance fluctuations caused by wind variability.

Market share of gas plants decreases as wind capacity increases.

Abstract

The creation of the Renewable Energy Law (Law 1715 of 2014) promotes the introduction of large-scale renewable energy generation in the Colombian electricity market. The new legislation aims to diversify the country's generation matrix, mainly composed of hydro and fuel-based generation, with a share of 66% and 34% respectively. Currently, three wind generation projects, with an aggregated capacity of 500 MW, have been commissioned in the North of the country. This study analyses the economic impact of the large-scale introduction of wind generation on both, the market spot price and conventional generation plants operation. For this purpose, the study builds a unit commitment model to mimic the current market legislation and the system's generation data. We show that the introduction of wind energy into the Colombian electricity market would impact the generation share of large hydro and gas-fired power plants. The hydro generation has an important role in balancing the generation for fluctuations on the wind resource. Meanwhile, the gas-fired plants would decrease their participation in the market, proportionally to the introduction of wind generation in the system, by as low as 20% of its current operation.