Find out why Latin America is na ideal hub for consolidating the energy transition

Specialists from PSR, the market and academia address the challenges of planning the operation and expansion of electrical systems with the expansion of renewable sources, at ELAU 2024

Latin America has the natural resources, regulatory mechanisms and infrastructure expansion conditions to face the challenges inherent to climate change and the energy transition. This was confirmed by Mario Veiga, founder and director of Innovation at PSR.

“Latin America has exceptional conditions in terms of a centrally planned transmission network and mechanisms to build transmission infrastructure. We have hydroelectric plants that work like large water batteries and we have abundant energy resources,” said Veiga during a round table on the challenges of planning the operation and expansion of electrical systems with high penetration of renewables. The discussion marked the opening of the Latin American Meeting of PSR Users, which takes place between March 18 and 22, in Panama City.

Veiga recalled that 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions are caused by the energy sector. And he highlighted that the electricity industry is capable of contributing to the decarbonization of the sector itself and the economy as a whole.

“The challenge now is to manage the great variability of wind and solar generation. We need storage and dynamic probabilistic reservation. Furthermore, we need transmission. The lack of transmission could compromise the growth of wind and solar,” he added.

Present at the round table was Ricardo Mota, the general director of the National Energy Control Center of Mexico (CENACE). Mota said there is a consensus that it is necessary to control emissions, considering that the Mexican system has a significant share of natural gas, which accounts for around 60% of the country’s energy mix. “We are gradually reducing the consumption of coal and other liquid fuels.”

Mota also highlighted the importance of CENACE’s partnership with PSR, which has been responsible for providing computational models that help in planning the expansion and operation of the Mexican electrical system. “We continue to work with PSR because all the results we have achieved are very valuable”.

In the same vein, Luiz Barroso, CEO of PSR, added that models play an important role in the operation of systems by allowing operators to define new products according to their needs, such as flexibility. “Nowadays there is a lot of talk about operational flexibility. Many countries, such as the United States, are already contracting specific flexibility products,” he explained.

Regarding planning, Barroso also added the importance of operational restrictions being very well represented in the models so that the planner can deliver a more suitable plan for the system. And, regarding climate change, he recalled that, during ELAU, they will discuss how to represent climate phenomena in computer models.

Still on the topic of climate change, Rodrigo Moreno, professor at the University of Chile and researcher at Imperial College London, who also participated in the round table, highlighted not only the importance of academia in this discussion, but also that one of the biggest challenges facing the energy sector today is how to adequately capture uncertainty in models. He also emphasized the relevance of the topic of resilience in networks.

The round table was mediated by Raphael Chabar, executive director of PSR and general technical and commercial coordinator for PSR’s teams and areas of computational models applied to the energy sector. Chabar leads the PSR team of experts present at ELAU.

ELAU has around 100 registered participants, from more than ten different countries, with varied profiles, including generators, planning and operating agencies, among others.

Find out more about the meeting and check out the full schedule on the event website: https://elau2024.psr-inc.com/