Optimal Storage in Power Systems with High Share of Renewable Energy

The European path to decarbonization of the economy implies a large share of renewable energy in the power system, which in many cases consists in variable resource renewables, such as wind and photovoltaics. Economical and available storage is needed to minimize the investments and operational costs and limit overcapacity of renewables and spillage of their production. In this paper an optimization problem is set and solved, aimed at obtaining both the optimal installed capacity and hourly operation of a power system, including the storage power and capacity. The method has been applied to the Iberian Peninsula power system of 2030 to check the optimality of the proposed generation mix. Results show that the targets may be reached with a moderate need of storage and a small amount of renewables spillage and combined cycle plants with higher capacity factor than now.