Investigating the priority of market participants for low emission generation entry into the Australian grid

•Impact of the environment-driven policies on generation investment in Australia.•Selection of low emission generation candidates considering their attributes.•A net market benefit framework highlighting the surpluses of market participants.•Simulation of the large scale Queensland network.•Priority ranking approach to investigate the preferences of market participants.

Environment friendly policies and emission pricing schemes necessitate the integration of more and more renewable power into electricity grids. However, generation entry and transmission network development in a deregulated market depends on the cost and benefit of a project, where the system/market operator eventually decides the feasibility of investment. In this process, the priorities of market participants are overlooked in some cases. This paper investigates the preferences of market participants in evaluating renewable generation entry to the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM). The priorities of market participants have been investigated through a Multi-Attribute Decision Making (MADM) approach. The TOPSIS (Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to Ideal Solution) algorithm is used to rank the preferences. Optimal Power Flow (OPF) and economic optimization of the Queensland network of the Australian NEM have been simulated in PSS/E and the MATLAB/MatPower software platform. Simulation studies confirm that in the current scenario, gas fired power plants near to the grid will lead in the generation portfolio due to their low lead time, lower investment and dispatchability. Remotely located wind and geothermal power would only be competitive with the existing LRET (Large scale Renewable Energy Target) payments along with very high carbon emission prices.