Designing effective and efficient incentive policies for renewable in generation expansion planning

Abstract

<p>We present a bilevel optimization approach to designing effective and efficient incentive policies for promoting renewable energy. The effectiveness of an incentive policy is its capability to achieve a goal that would not be achievable without it. Renewable</p> <p>portfolio standard is used in this thesis as the policy goal. The efficiency of an incentive policy is measured by the amount of intervention, such as taxes collected and subsidies</p> <p>paid, to achieve the policy goal. We obtain the most effective and efficient incentive policies in the context of generation expansion planning, in which a planner makes investment decisions to serve project demand of electricity. A case study is conducted on</p> <p>an integrated coal and electricity network representing the contiguous United States. Numerical analysis from the case study provides insights on the comparison of various</p> <p>incentive policies. The sensitivity of the incentive policies with respect to coal production, energy investment costs, and transmission capacity is also studied.</p>