The challenge of inserting wind power generation into the Brazilian hydrothermal optimal dispatch

Brazil has a total of 4.648 power generation projects in operation, totaling 161 GW of installed capacity, where 74% comes from hydroelectric power plants and about 7% from intermittent generation sources (wind power in particular). An addition of 25 GW is scheduled for the next few years in the country's generation capacity, where 43% of this increment will come from intermittent sources. Nowadays, planning the Brazilian energy sector means, basically, making decisions about the dispatch of hydroelectric and thermoelectric plants where the operation strategy minimizes the expected value of the operation cost during the planning period, which is composed of fuel costs plus penalties for failing to supply the projected expected load. Given the growing trend of wind power generation, basically in the Northeast region of the country, within the Brazilian energy matrix, it is necessary to include this type of generation into the optimal approach dispatch currently used, so that this type of generation is effectively considered in the long term planning. This talk aims to show the preliminary developments toward the implementation in a stochastic way of such kind of energy generation, in order to generate the optimal hydrothermal wind dispatch.