Low-Carbon Electricity Network Transition Considering Retirement of Aging Coal Generators

In order to achieve sustainable development goals, modern power systems need to achieve a low-carbon transition. Retirement and replacement of aging coal-fired power plants (CFPP) is the major part of electricity network transition. However, the sudden retirement of large aging CFPP could lead to power supply or reserve shortages and generally, it takes several years to complete the replacement process. This paper proposes a low-carbon electricity network transition model, helping to plan aging CFPP retirement and renewable power plants installation as well as network augmentation. The trade-off decisions are found among three conflicting objectives including cost, risk and carbon emission. Moreover, the carbon emission flow (CEF) model is applied in the planning process to calculate carbon emissions from the demand side, in order to assess the efficacy of the low-carbon transition. A relatively new multi-objective natural aggregation algorithm (MONAA) is introduced and applied to find the optimal solution. The proposed model is verified on a modified IEEE 24-bus RTS system and a modified IEEE 118-bus system. According to the numerical results, the proposed model can achieve carbon mitigation, cost and risk benefits and provide a roadmap to guide the energy network transformation towards a low-carbon economy. © 2020 IEEE.