Capacity configuration of a hydro-wind-solar-storage bundling system with transmission constraints of the receiving-end power grid and its techno-economic evaluation

•A screening method for capacity configuration is proposed.•The interaction between transmission and feasibility constraints is explored.•The bundling system solves renewable consumption problems and supply–demand imbalance.•The integrated feed-in tariff is exponential with the transmission guarantee rate. The hydro-wind-solar-storage bundling system plays a critical role in solving spatial and temporal mismatch problems between renewable energy resources and the electric load in China. An efficient bundling system capacity configuration can improve the consumption level and reduce the renewable energy transmission cost. However, the restriction between economic feasibility and technical transmission constraints of the bundling system is not well understood. This restriction is becoming more and more obvious with the decrease of renewable energy price compensation year by year. This study compares the role of technical and economic indicators of capacity configuration, as well as the constraint relationship between electricity price and transmission constraints. Three screening principles of capacity configuration are proposed to reveal the techno-economic interaction. This paper explores a practical engineering case of Northwest China using a bundling system capacity configuration model. The internal rate of return is assumed as 8% for the bundling system. The results show that reducing the wind curtailment rate can effectively reduce the cost per MWh when the transmission guarantee rate is larger than 90%. Moreover, an integrated feed-in tariff based on market competitiveness is obtained if the wind curtailment rate is controlled by 5%. For example, the integrated feed-in tariff is 463.7 RMB/MWh when the wind curtailment rate is less than 5% and the transmission guarantee rate is larger than 95%. These results verify that the techno-economic interaction of the bundling system offers important theoretical support for selecting techno-economic indicators and capacity configuration.