Joint Centralized and Distributed Electricity Generation Expansion in a Decarbonized Scenario: The Spanish Case

Power systems of most EU countries will face substantial changes driven mainly by the EU Clean Energy Package and the expected increasing role of customers making use of demand response and distributed self-generation and self-storage resources (self-DG&S). This work aims to analyze the impact of these two factors on the long term evolution of both utility scale centralized generation and storage (CG&S), and self-DG&S. An hourly-resolution generation expansion model based on cost minimization for CG&S and expenses' minimization for self-DG&S is used. Four case studies covering the period 2018-2047 for a real sized system (the Spanish one) are presented. Results highlight a strong synergy between battery costs and solar photovoltaic investments, while wind power seems to be better complemented by peaker thermal units.