Development of Investment Strategies for Wind Power Generation

This paper develops investment strategies for wind power generation under the assumption that generation capacity and investment resources are flexible. The investment problem is formulated as a mixed-integer programming problem with the constraints specified as intervals and the net present value of generation profits as the objective. The optimum solutions are expressed in terms of number and size of each wind turbine model. The screening & ranking method is proposed to identify the most attractive investment plan among multiple optimum solutions. Sensitivity analysis is then performed to assess the impact of investment parameters. Numerical simulations have been tested with actual wind speed data and a simplified model of wind power project in the southern coast of Thailand.

I. Introduction

Although it is widely recognized that wind power generation is clean and environmental friendly as well as increasingly competitive, but wind turbine power plant is highly capital-invested and relies on the intermittent and unpredictable nature of the wind. The major concerns is that wind power can be neither storable nor scheduling so that the wind generation may not coincide with electricity demand. Consequently, electric utility would have to add more capacity reserve in the presence of wind wind power generation.