Climate Change Impacts in the Assured Energy of the Brazilian Power Generation System

Over the past few years, there has been a growing global consensus related to the importance of renewable energy to minimize the emission of greenhouse gases. The solution is an increase in the number of renewable power plants but unfortunately, this leads to a high dependence on climate variables which are already affected by climate change. Brazil is one of the largest producers of electricity by renewables through its hydro-dominant power generation system. However, hydro-generation depends on water inflows that are directly affected by climate change that consequently affect the electricity production. Therefore, these changes need to be considered in the operation and planning of a hydro-dominant power system. In this project, we investigate the effects of different climate scenarios from IPCC in the water inflows produced by the regional Eta climate model. Normally, studies use an optimization model to make decisions in case of a hydro-thermal scheduling problem and use the assured energy to evaluate the hydro-production. In this analysis, water inflows used in the optimization process consider different trends according to its associated climate scenario. Climate change may drastically impact the system assured energy and consequently, the system’s capability to supply load in the country.

Lima, J.W.M. (PI), de Queiroz, A.R. (co-PI), Lima, L.M.M. (co-PI), Climate Change Impacts in the Assured Energy of the Brazilian Power Generation System, Funded by the Brazilian Electricity Regulation Agency ANEEL, 2011-2014

Computation flowchart used to evaluate the system assured energy.

Water inflows future variation for each future period with respect to the base period.

Structure of system assured energy simulation cases.

Existing Generation System (EGS) vs Future Generation System (FGS): Assured energy variation from Eta-40 CTL simulation cases.