Proposed method for contracting of wind-photovoltaic projects connected to the Brazilian electric system using multiobjective programming.

Abstract Owing to the wind and photovoltaic (PV) potential in Brazil, the country has recently seen increased exploration into the construction of wind-PV hybrid plants. However, as specific criteria for contracting this type of project have not yet been developed, this paper presents a model to assist the government in contracting projects that maximize the socioeconomic well-being of the Brazilian electricity sector. For this, multiobjective programming is used to simultaneously handle two objective functions—maximally reducing emission density and minimizing the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE)—with the aid of the mixture arrangement technique. In this respect, the optimization method called normal boundary intersection (NBI) is applied to solve the multiobjective problem and construct the Pareto frontier. Additionally, a metric based on the ratio between entropy and the global percentage error (GPE) is used to identify the optimal Pareto solution. The model was applied to determine optimal configurations for wind-PV powerplants in twelve Brazilian cities, and the results obtained reveal the capacity of the model to indicate the optimum configuration according to the wind and PV potential of each city. Highlights • The use of renewable energy sources has been encouraged in Brazil. • The construction of PV-wind hybrid plants has been recently explored. • Normal Boundary Intersection is used to simultaneously handle two objective functions. • Reduced emission density and LCOE were optimized in twelve Brazilian cities. • Results reveal the capacity of the model to indicate the plants optimum configuration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]