Low-carbon oriented power system expansion planning considering the long-term uncertainties of transition tasks

Nowadays, power sector is faced with the challenge of low-carbon transition by reducing carbon emissions while ensuring sufficient electricity supply. However, the prolonged transition process may present long-term uncertainties related to the concurrent tasks of regulating total carbon emissions and providing abundant electricity. The variation of these tasks poses a potential threat to the success of low-carbon transition. To confront this challenge, this study proposes a power system expansion planning model which integrates transmission expansion, renewable generation expansion, energy storage systems deployment coordinated with the retirement of coal-fired power plants and retrofit of coal-fired power plants to carbon capture power plants in compliance with transition targets. Then, a risk-averse planning strategy countering the long-term uncertainties of transition tasks is adopted to constitute a two-level multi-objective planning framework based on information gap decision theory. And the second-level risk-averse model is reformulated with an augmented normalized normal constraint method to obtain the Pareto frontier. Numerical results indicate that integrating the retirement and retrofit of coal-fired power plants yields a significant reduction in total cost (4.71 %), compared to a case without such integration. And the transition tasks can be accomplished in a robust way by preferred risk-averse approach.