The development of sustainable energy sources and their enabling infrastructures are often met by public
opposition, resulting in lengthy planning processes. One proposed means of reducing public opposition is constraining the
capacity of renewable energy projects onshore, leading to more small-scale, decentralised and possibly community-driven
developments. This work computes the effects of same by performing a medium- and long-term generation expansion planning
exercise considering two renewable development cases, in which renewable power expansion is spatially constrained to certain
degrees, under high and low storage cost regimes. We employ an appropriately designed optimisation model, accounting for
network effects, which are largely neglected in previous studies. We apply our study to the future Irish power system under a
range of demand and policy scenarios. Irrespective of storage costs, the unconstrained portfolio is marginally cheaper than the
constrained one. However, there are substantial differences in the final generation expansion portfolios. 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