Integrated Power Generation and Natural Gas Expansion Planning

Energy companies and governments have considered alternative solutions over traditional planning problem where electricity, natural gas, oil are treated as an independent problem. The optimization and integration of the energy sources and demands in a common framework is one of the current challenges. New methodologies and tools for system planning and operation that include multiple energy carriers with sufficient topological details are being developed. This paper proposes a method that integrates the natural gas and electricity systems in with the objective of study their expansion together. The natural gas network model includes the natural gas well and pipelines whereas the electrical systems the hydrothermal power generation and transmission systems. The paper describes the main equations associated to the energy transformation between natural gas and electrical energy which links the two structures. A mathematical model of this problem is formulated as a multistage m optimization problem where the objective function is to minimize the integrated gas-electricity investment and operation costs. A simplified example with the Brazilian system is used for testing the proposed methodology.