Power System Planning Assessment for Optimizing Renewable Energy Integration in the Maluku Electricity System

Abstract

The planning of electrical power systems in remote island areas poses a few challenges, such as requiring many load centers, various energy sources, and certain geographical conditions, which leads to inefficiencies in energy production. For this reason, it is necessary to plan an electrical transmission system to efficiently transfer the power between load centers. Previous research has found that the completion of the most economical power system will be achieved in 2050 on the condition that the Ambon, Seram, Haruku, and Saparua (Ambon-SHS) systems are interconnected in 2025. Providing complementary support, this paper conducts a power system analysis to assess the proposed interconnection system in Maluku Island, which has several islands, small load centers, and local renewable energy resources. The power system analysis was performed using DIgSILENT PowerFactory and was carried out every 5 years of the system planning period until 2050. The results show that the design of the obtained transmission system meets the standard security criteria, which include thermal loading and voltage, being under both normal and N-1 contingency conditions, a short-circuit current, voltage stability, frequency stability, and transient stability. Finally, this paper demonstrates that the proposed plan is economically and technically feasible.