Assesing the entry of PV generation in subsystems of the National Interconnected System from Paraguay

This work seeks to develop an equivalent model of Paraguay's National Interconnected System (SIN), organized in six subsystems and with an hourly time resolution, in order to quantify the economic impact associated to the entry of PV projects in terms of savings in operating costs. Paraguay accounts for PV generation potential over almost the entire country. Hence, PV projects distributed throughout the country's regions could help in reducing transmission congestion and losses, having in mind the demand growth and the fact that currently generation and consumption centers are rather distant from one another. The model development is based of hourly-equivalent curves for the demand and the PV generation, by considering a typical installed capacity, in each subsystem of the SIN. The simulation period extends for 10 years, from 2018 to 2028, and five scenarios for the demand growth rate are analyzed. For simulating the SIN's operation and performing power flow calculations, the MATPOWER extension for MATLAB is used. Simulation results, obtained by assuming the entry of a typical PV project in one subsystem at the time, allow to rank the subsystems in terms of operating costs reduction. In that sense, it is concluded that the entry of the PV project in the Southern Subsystem implies the most-feasible investment alternative.