الفهرس 
Introduction & Literature ReviewOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Egypt, as a one of the world emerging economies, pays a lot of interest for securing its
future needs of electrical energy according to the international standards at least possible
costs. One of the main pillars to achieve this target is through the diversification of the
electricity generation mix to include further types of conventional and non-conventional
generation technologies. Among the non-conventional technologies, VRES from wind and
solar power occupy a considerable area in Egypt’ long term strategy especially knowing that,
the country is endowed with huge potential of these renewable energy resources. For this
regard, Egypt has already set ambitious plans to expand the contribution of these resources in
its future electricity generation mix.
Compared to the other types of generation technologies, VRES are characterized by
intermittent nature that introduces a number of operational constraints for the power system.
The impact of these constraints on the healthy technical and economic operation of the power
system magnifies with increasing the share of these intermittent technologies. This thesis will
thus focus on developing a new GEP methodology capable of considering the intermittent
nature of variable RES in the planning process so that, the resulting optimized energy mix is
capable of utilizing the economic and environmental benefits from these RES without
compromising the reliability or economics of generating electricity.
For achieving this goal, the thesis studies a number of issues related to the main subject of
the thesis starting with studying and evaluating the impacts of VRES’ intermittency on the
technical and economic operation of the power system especially from the supply demand
balance point of view. Then, the thesis reviews the concept of VRES’ capacity credit and the
different methods for calculating it. The thesis then studies the different ways for assessing
system operational reserves necessary to protect the generation system against the different
sources of uncertainties including those arising from VRES. The concept of generation mix
flexibility was then discussed and the corresponding impact of this flexibility on the
integration of VRES was evaluated. Finally, the thesis develops a new GEP methodology
considering the previously discussed issues with the objective of finding the least cost
optimized energy mix capable of achieving the long term VRES expansion targets while not
violating the economic or reliability behavior of the system.
For each of the studied topics, the necessary computer models have been built using the
MATLAB software and a number of case studies based on the data available for the Egyptian
power system were considered. Accordingly, a set of results have been obtained in terms of VRES and finally the optimum mix of new capacities required to integrate VRES under the
different VRES expansion scenarios.
The previous results showed that, the intermittency of VRES can introduce severe impacts
on the system net load curve that is met by conventional generation capacities. Such impacts
include the reduction of the system minimum load level as well as increasing the variability
(given by the magnitude and frequency of ramps) in the system net load. Such impacts will
require the generation system to be equipped with additional operating reserves as well as
calling for additional flexibility in the generation side to cope with the system net load curve.
On the other hand, the thesis assesses finds out that, VRES especially wind power can
contribute in meeting the system peak loads and not only working as energy sources as have
always been considered. In this regard, the contribution of wind power in meeting the system
peak loads was found to be in the range of 26.5% to 30.2% of the total installed wind capacity
while solar PV power (without storage) was found to have zero capacity credit due to the uncorrelation
of
solar PV generation with the system peak loads that occur in the night for the
case of the Egyptian power system.
Finally, in terms of the future energy mix required to integrate VRES into the power
system, the study found that, modeling the intermittency of VRES as well as the dynamic
limits defining the flexibility of conventional generation capacities in the planning model has
shown that, increasing the share of VRES in the power system will require the energy mix to
move from depending on cheap base load generation technologies into more flexible types of
generation units. This movement however will cause the total system cost to increase and
accordingly increasing the cost of the electricity generated by the system driven by the higher
generation costs of medium and high flexibility units compared to that of the low flexibility
ones. This result thus shows that, the system will pay additional integration costs to achieve
the VRES targets in the future and most importantly highlights the need for developing new
GEP models and methodologies to simulate with the intermittency of VRES in the planning
process.