Renewable-based generation expansion planning considering environmental issues using GSA

Generation expansion planning (GEP) is the problem of finding the optimal strategy to plan the construction of new generation plants while satisfying technical and economic constraints. In recent years, increasing concern for climate change has driven lots of countries all over the world to promote energy generation from renewable resources. Moreover, applying rigid environmental regulations by regulating authorities has been made generation companies (GENCOs) to consider emission as an important constraint in their generation expansion planning. In this circumstance, renewable energy sources (RES) can be pointed out as an appropriate alternative to fossil fuel-fired units which have a remarkable share on releasing different contaminants especially CO₂, as the major contributor to greenhouse effect, into the atmosphere. In this paper, to investigate the impact of RES penetration on the greenhouse gases mitigation, an integrated renewable-conventional GEP model including a suitably modified objective function and additional constraints is presented. In order to encourage the GENCO in more investment on renewable resources, one of the most popular incentive-based support schemes, namely feed-in-tariff, is incorporated into the model. The resulting problem is solved by a novel heuristic technique namely, gravitational search algorithm. Obtained results reveal that the penetration of RES is a critical option for emission reduction.