Generation Expansion Planning with Upstream Supply Chain Constraints on Materials, Manufacturing, and Deployment
For power system planners, this work highlights the critical impact of supply chain limitations on generation expansion decisions, which are often ignored in traditional models.
This paper introduces a multi-stage generation expansion planning model that incorporates upstream supply chain constraints on materials, manufacturing, and deployment. A case study in Maryland shows that these constraints shift technology choices, increase costs by $1.2 billion in a low-demand scenario, and cause reliability issues under high demand.
Rising electricity demand underscores the need for secure and reliable generation expansion planning that accounts for upstream supply chain constraints. Traditional models often overlook limitations in materials, manufacturing capacity, lead times for deployment, and field availability, which can delay availability of planned resources and thus to threaten system reliability. This paper introduces a multi-stage supply chain-constrained generation expansion planning (SC-GEP) model that optimizes long-term investments while capturing material availability, production limits, spatial and temporal constraints, and material reuse from retired assets. A decomposition algorithm efficiently solves the resulting MILP. A Maryland case study shows that supply chain constraints shift technology choices, amplify deployment delays caused by lead times, and prompt earlier investment in shorter lead-time, low-material-intensity options. In the low-demand scenario, supply chain constraints raise investment costs by $1.2 billion. Under high demand, persistent generation and reserve shortfalls emerge, underscoring the need to integrate upstream constraints into long-term planning.