News and Events

CESI SpA hosts the WEC Interconnectivity Task Force in Milan

The Interconnectivity Task Force chaired by WEC Vice Chair Elías Velasco García met at CESI in Milan, Italy on 4-5 June. The Task Force continues its work on a wide range of issues and topics related to secure, reliable and efficient electricity transmission networks, including technical, economical and environmental aspects; markets and regulation; the need for coordination, system standards and pricing transparency. What impact will a CO2 levy have on competitiveness of various options? How to integrate renewables into the grid? What makes a grid "smart"? These and other issues are being investigated by the Task Force, which will also prepare an overview of interconnections in large integrated grids, in all geographical regions, sub-regions and major countries or clusters of countries.

The meeting in Milan included a tour of CESI's laboratories with the world class facilities for testing high, medium and low voltage electrical equipment for AC and DC systems. At the meeting, the Task Force, led by its Director Dr. Alessandro Clerici, reviewed a large number of detailed documents produced since the last meeting in January and agreed on the way to integrate emerging messages into a draft report to be finalised at the next meeting of the Task Force.

The graph below demonstrates transmission cost per kWh for electricity loads between 100 and 400 MW and distances between 200 and 600 km.

Source: WEC Interconnectivity Task Force draft report/A. Clerici

It is assumed that the capitalised cost of transmission losses is 1500 €/kW and costs of transmission construction medium-to-low.

The graph highlights local costs of imported electricity for different types of loads generated by plants located far from the consumption areas. Clearly, using cheap energy from remote areas is costly but it makes a case for utilisation of flared gas or marginal gas fields.

Transport of gas also requires large flows to be economic. The dynamics of gas transport costs are negative for marginal gas fields. From an economic standpoint such fields may not warrant building long distance gas transportation pipelines for the "limited" volumes to be transported.

A good example of this type of development is the Aguaytía Project located in the jungle in Peru with the gas reserves estimated at 12Gm3 (about 5% of Peru's total gas reserves). A gas processing plant located near the field has a capacity of 1.5 Mm3/day and supplies natural gas to an electrical power plant sited about 5km from Aguaytía. The generating capacity of the plant is 160 MW using two open-cycle gas turbines units. Since the consumption load area is remote from the plant and located along the coast of Peru, an electric power transmission line rated 220 kV, 200 MVA connects the power plant to the main electricity grid at the coastal city of Paramonga some 400 km away. Construction of the Aguaytía Project started in August 1996 and it began operation in July 1998. The electricity produced from this marginal gas reserve corresponds to about 5% of Peru's total electricity generation. Current plans include extension of the generation plant capacity by an additional 50 MW combined-cycle unit.