LAUSR

Abstract Community opposition has caused delays in renewable energy investments. The literature suggests that increasing setback distances, decreasing scale and increasing self-sufficiency among others may increase community acceptance of energy infrastructures. We perform an analysis of the evolution of the Irish power system under these policies by constraining the maximum onshore renewable generation installation at each transmission node, accounting for network and spatial effects. We also consider the impacts of uncertainty in storage costs. An unconstrained renewable development portfolio is marginally cheaper than a constrained one. However, there are substantial differences in the final generation expansion portfolios and spatial allocations. The network reinforcement requirements are also greater under the unconstrained approach. Lower storage costs only slightly mitigate the costs of capacity constraints but significantly alter the spatial distribution of generation investments. The differential in costs between the unconstrained and constrained cases increases non-linearly with renewable generation targets. Future work will consider transmission as well as generation investments.