The electric power generation system of Uruguay will face significant changes in the near future. The main change is due to the incorporation of a large amount of wind power. The objective is to reach 1200 MW of installed capacity by 2015. The expected electricity demand for that year is 1400 MW on average with a peak of 2000 MW, so wind power penetration would be 60% and 33% of power and energy respectively. Wind resource has been analyzed, focusing on its spatial-temporal behavior, and different wind farm distributions all over the country have been studied, modeling the operation of the power generation system in each case. According to the simulations of the electrical system (time step of 1 hour), the supply cost is almost not affected by the wind power allocation. We conclude that any non-centralized wind power distribution would manage to reduce high frequency variations, thereby reducing reserve capacity requirements.
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