Towards a More Sustainable Electricity Production: Modelling and Optimization of a Weekly Interconnected Electricity Grid. The Case of Corsica Island

Increasing scarcity of fossil fuels steer governments to favour the integration of local renewable energy sources (RES) into the electricity mix while reducing final energy consumption. The contribution of this paper aims to design firstly, an open model of high voltage electrical network of Corsica island. Then, scenarios over consumption and electricity supply are implemented for long-term horizon (2050). Two single-objective optimizations aiming the minimization of the total system cost or the minimization of carbon equivalent emissions, are solved separately, by linear programming (LP) algorithm. Thus, transmission expansion, energy output dispatch and storage system needed are optimized. The results provide a reduction of the carbon dioxide emissions ranging from 70% to 90%, reaching an average rate equals to 50 gCO<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</inf>/kWh. The renewable production is able to ensure until 95% of the demand, leading a decrease of the electricity production cost to 73 €/MWh. The research works highlight the steps to take for the energy transition settled in 2050.