Overcoming Barriers to 100% Renewable Energy: Network Flow Optimization of California's Energy Transmission Grid

Abstract

If California, the state with the second highest energy demand of the United States of America, had the ability to run fully on renewable resources, their research, methodology and implementation strategy would pave the way for many other states. California has a great combination of population density, natural resources, and existing transmission infrastructure to encourage and lead renewable power expansion across the country. Governor Brown’s Clean Energy Pollution Act calls for California to be 50% electricity renewable by 2030 and this thesis addresses its feasibility by looking to maximize the existing transmission grid with solely renewable energy. This implementation faces multiple barriers such as operational challenges of integrating new plants and the immediate economic investment of new infrastructure; therefore, the focus of this thesis will be on minimizing cost. With the complex, intertwined and connected network nature of electric grids and over 2,400 active power plants in the state of California, the problem is a complex but important to solve issue. The basic structural design to optimize is the flow of renewable energy between power plants and counties with a focus on the source of generation and supply of merchant power into the electrical grid. This thesis will optimize the energy transmission routes in California by exploring a few aspects of the energy grid - primarily shared power lines and the ability for the generation capacity of power plants to satisfy the needs of their consumer counties. By finding the optimal routes for energy transportation, this thesis will determine whether 100% renewable energy in California, a goal set by Senate Bill-100, is feasible or not.