Techno-Economic Analysis of Intermittent Renewable Energy Penetration with the Proposed India-Sri Lanka HVDC Interconnection

This paper presents a techno-economic analysis to identify the level of intermittent renewable energy (RE) such as wind & solar penetration in to the Sri Lankan power system with the proposed India-Sri Lanka HVDC interconnection. This research adopts a methodology to identify the level of RE penetration with the HVDC link and compares with original power system planned with a pumped storage power plant. Future power plant additions based on least cost principles were derived using WASP software considering a staged development of the interconnection; 500MW in 2025 and 1000MW in 2028. This power plant schedule was input to long term dispatch simulation software SDDP and short term dispatch simulation software NCP to simulate the dispatch and obtain excess generation from renewable to calculate the RE penetration level. The economic analysis was carried out to identify the cost impact and it was observed that the interconnection is economical for the initial RE capacities. RE penetration can be increased with the interconnection at an additional cost to the system. Therefore, sensitivity analyse were carried out to identify at what variable cost would the interconnection bring economic benefits to the country.