Simulating the Swedish Electric Energy Production : An optimization perspective

Abstract: Production of electric energy is continuously affected by many factors. Therefore, tools for predicting the future production are needed. In turn, the production affects the electric energy price, which is set on electric energy exchanges. This thesis is intended to find out if the software SDDP can be used for hydrothermal power production simulations in the Nord pool area. By building a simplified model of the electric energy production in Sweden with a focus on hydro, thermal and wind power, the intention is to see how the model is affected by different conditions. The investigated conditions are several; higher and lower water inflows to the hydro power reservoirs; different amounts of installed wind power production; different price levels of emission allowances for CO2. By using the simulation software SDDP, more wind power was seen to lower the electric energy prices, as well as reduce the need of transmission of power from the northern to the southern parts of Sweden. In the simulation, Sweden was divided into four areas, connected where the main bottlenecks in the power grid are located. Water inflows to the reservoirs are crucial in the model. Actual inflow data can be bought from SMHI. However, due to the limited thesis budget, estimations were constructed instead. The estimations were difficult to make and turned out to be too high. Consequently, no reliable evaluation of the SDDP software could be done using this data.