Analysis and modeling of Spain's power sector in order to define the best incentive policies for achieving an optimum energy mix

Abstract

The goal of this thesis is the development of a model of the Spanish energy mix in order to be able to forecast its evolution in function of exogenous variables such as the public opinion about specific technologies, the price of oil, the price of natural gas, the interest rate, etc. at a given moment in time. The development of such a model is interesting in order to set the right pOlicies and incentives for achieving a required energy mix as well as to calculate the system costs at a specific moment in time. This way, under or overinvestment in specific technologies can be avoided. This issue has been a cause of concern in Spain, where for example, because of erratic incentive policies a huge overinvestment in solar PV power happened between 2008 and 2009, which entailed higher than expected energy costs that will have to be paid by the final consumers for many years. So, a model of the power system has been developed using the System Dynamics methodology. The model has been subsequently validated using historical data in order to check that the results obtained by the model reflect the reality. Once validated, different future scenarios have been considered and the model has been used in order to define the energy policies that entail the optimum results in terms of the resulting energy mix and wholesale power price. Learnings and conclusions about the Spanish power market have been summarized.