Environmental impacts arising from electricity interchanges between Greece and neighbouring countries

The paper presents the results of a study dealing with an evaluation of the environmental impacts of electricity interchanges between Greece and neighbouring countries. Usually, the calculation of power interchanges between electricity generating systems is based solely on economic criteria; the environmental impacts of each system are not considered. Power interchanges affect the utilization of the individual generation systems and consequently the emission from each system. It is anticipated that power interchanges have a different environmental impact for each system. The environmental impacts of emissions into the air (CO2, SO2, NOx and particulates) from solid and liquid fuels are discussed. The study considers the interconnected systems of Greece and variants of the Italian and Bulgarian systems. The study is performed using two software packages developed at the National Technical University of Athens: PROSIM for probabilistic production simulation and POWEREX for evaluating the economy-energy interchanges between the power systems. Assuming no interchanges between the three systems, a detailed production simulation is performed for each system in order to calculated fuel consumption and the associated emissions for a period of one year. For the same period, the optimal interchanges between the three systems are then determined, with the objective of minimizing the overall production cost (pool operation). On the basis of these interchanges, the load demand of each system is adjusted and the detailed production simulation is repeated. The production costs and the emissions of the three systems with and without economy-energy interchanges are analyzed. (author). 2 refs, 12 tabs