Reanalysis models are rapidly gaining popularity for simulating wind power output due to their convenience and global coverage. However, they should only be relied upon once thoroughly proven. This ...paper reports the first international validation of reanalysis for wind energy, testing NASA's MERRA and MERRA-2 in 23 European countries. Both reanalyses suffer significant spatial bias, overestimating wind output by 50% in northwest Europe and underestimating by 30% in the Mediterranean. We derive national correction factors, and show that after calibration national hourly output can be modelled with R2 above 0.95. Our underlying data are made freely available to aid future research.
We then assess Europe's wind resources with twenty-year simulations of the current and potential future fleets. Europe's current average capacity factor is 24.2%, with countries ranging from 19.5% (Germany) to 32.4% (Britain). Capacity factors are rising due to improving technology and locations; for example, Britain's wind fleet is now 23% more productive than in 2005. Based on the current planning pipeline, we estimate Europe's average capacity factor could increase by nearly a third to 31.3%. Countries with large stakes in the North Sea will see significant gains, with Britain's average capacity factor rising to 39.4% and Germany's to 29.1%.
•Reanalysis is a simple yet powerful tool for simulating hourly wind power output.•Many previous studies use it without validation, resulting in significant errors.•We model hourly national capacity factors with R2 > 0.95 and RMS error <4%.•We analyse 20 years of EU-wide wind data and make it freely available.•Europe's future wind fleet will have capacity factors one-third higher than today's.
Solar PV is rapidly growing globally, creating difficult questions around how to efficiently integrate it into national electricity grids. Its time-varying power output is difficult to model credibly ...because it depends on complex and variable weather systems, leading to difficulty in understanding its potential and limitations. We demonstrate how the MERRA and MERRA-2 global meteorological reanalyses as well as the Meteosat-based CM-SAF SARAH satellite dataset can be used to produce hourly PV simulations across Europe. To validate these simulations, we gather metered time series from more than 1000 PV systems as well as national aggregate output reported by transmission network operators. We find slightly better accuracy from satellite data, but greater stability from reanalysis data. We correct for systematic bias by matching our simulations to the mean bias in modeling individual sites, then examine the long-term patterns, variability and correlation with power demand across Europe, using thirty years of simulated outputs. The results quantify how the increasing deployment of PV substantially changes net power demand and affects system adequacy and ramping requirements, with heterogeneous impacts across different European countries. The simulation code and the hourly simulations for all European countries are available freely via an interactive web platform, www.renewables.ninja.
•Reanalysis and satellite simulations validated against >1000 sites and national data.•Neither of the two data sources is clearly superior to the other in all respects.•Analysis of long-term patterns of PV output in Europe.•Increasing PV deployment leads to substantial net power demand changes.•Simulations are available freely via the www.renewables.ninja platform.
Britain and Germany saw unprecedented growth of variable renewable energy (VRE) in the last decade. Many studies suggest this will significantly raise short-term power system operation costs for ...balancing and congestion management. We review the actual development of these costs, their allocation and policy implications in both countries.
Since 2010, system operation costs have increased by 62% in Britain (with a five-fold increase in VRE capacity) and remained comparable in Germany (with capacity doubling). Within this, balancing costs stayed level in Britain (–4%) and decreased substantially in Germany (–72%), whilst congestion management costs have grown 74% in Britain and 14-fold in Germany. Curtailment costs vary widely from year to year, and should fall strongly when ongoing and planned grid upgrades are completed. Curtailment rates for wind farms have risen to 4–5% in Germany and 5–6% in Britain (0–1% for offshore and 15–16% for onshore Scottish farms).
Policy debates regarding the balancing system are similar in both countries, focussing on strengthening imbalance price signals and the extent that VRE generators bear the integration costs they cause. Both countries can learn from each other's balancing market and imbalance settlement designs. Britain should reform its balancing markets to be more transparent, competitive and open to new providers (especially VRE generators). Shorter trading intervals and gate closure would both require and enable market participants (including VRE) to take more responsibility for balancing. Germany should consider a reserve energy market and move to marginal imbalance pricing.
•We review balancing and congestion costs in Britain and Germany's power systems.•Balancing costs are flat or falling, despite renewables growing 5× and 2× since 2010.•Congestion costs are growing whilst transmission systems undergo upgrades.•4.4% of German and 5.6% of British wind power was curtailed in 2016, some 4.65 TWh.•Germany and Britain could learn from the design of each other's balancing markets.
Wind and solar power have experienced rapid cost declines and are being deployed at scale. However, their output variability remains a key problem for managing electricity systems, and the ...implications of multi-day to multi-year variability are still poorly understood. As other energy-using sectors are electrified, the shape and variability of electricity demand will also change. We develop an open framework for quantifying the impacts of weather on electricity supply and demand using the Renewables.ninja and DESSTINEE models. We demonstrate this using a case study of Britain using National Grid's Two Degrees scenario forwards to 2030.
We find the British electricity system is rapidly moving into unprecedented territory, with peak demand rising above 70 GW due to electric heating, and intermittent renewable output exceeding demand as early as 2021. Hourly ramp-rates widen by 50% and year-to-year variability increases by 80%, showing why future power system studies must consider multiple years of data, and the influence of weather on both supply and demand. Our framework is globally applicable, and allows detailed scenarios of hourly electricity supply and demand to be explored using only limited input data such as annual quantities from government scenarios or broader energy systems models.
•Electricity supply and demand are becoming increasingly weather-dependent.•We demonstrate a globally-applicable framework using high-resolution open-source data.•Britain could expect dramatic changes to its electricity system in the near-term future.•2030 sees net negative demand days while nuclear baseload is severely squeezed.•Heat electrification could see peak demand increase by 20% in 15 years.
Society's dependence on weather systems has broadened to include electricity generation from wind turbines. Climate change is altering energy flows in the atmosphere, which will affect the economic ...potential of wind power. Changes to wind resources and their upstream impacts on the energy industry have received limited academic attention, despite their risks earning interest from investors.
We propose a framework for assessing the impact of climate change on the cost of wind energy, going from the change in hourly wind speed distributions from radiative forcing through to energy output and levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) from wind farms. The paper outlines the proof of concept for this framework, exploring the limitations of global climate models for assessing wind resources, and a novel Weibull transfer function to characterise the climate signal.
The framework is demonstrated by considering the UK's wind resources to 2100. Results are mixed: capacity factors increase in some regions and decrease in others, while the year-to-year variation generally increases. This highlights important financial and risk impacts which can be adopted into policy to enhance energy system resilience to the impacts of climate change. We call for greater emphasis to be placed on modelling wind resources in climate science.
•We present a framework for assessing the effects of climate change on wind resource.•This unifies research across meteorology, engineering, economics and policy.•Exemplary UK results show decreasing LCOEs in the north and increasing in the south.•The impacts on LCOE are accentuated both with time and with increasing emissions.
Automotive proton-exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) have finally reached a state of technological readiness where several major automotive companies are commercially leasing and selling fuel cell ...electric vehicles, including Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai. These now claim vehicle speed and acceleration, refueling time, driving range, and durability that rival conventional internal combustion engines and in most cases outperform battery electric vehicles. The residual challenges and areas of improvement which remain for PEMFCs are performance at high current density, durability, and cost. These are expected to be resolved over the coming decade while hydrogen infrastructure needs to become widely available. Here, we briefly discuss the status of automotive PEMFCs, misconceptions about the barriers that platinum usage creates, and the remaining hurdles for the technology to become broadly accepted and implemented.
Energy systems around the world have started going through rapid and profound transformations. Electric vehicles are breaking into the mainstream, and millions of wind and solar farms are replacing ...fossil fuel power plants, but both developments create fundamental challenges for the security of electricity supply. Energy storage could resolve these and drive deep decarbonization at lower cost. As a result, the storage industry is projected to grow to hundreds of times its current size in the coming decades. Businesses, policy-makers, and academics need to assess the economic case for energy storage and the future roles it will play. This is complicated by rapidly falling investment costs, the wide range of technologies, and the vast array of use cases for energy storage. The authors introduce a comprehensive toolkit required for assessing how the benefits of energy storage stack up against its costs. They give sharp insights on future prices, lifetime costs, technology competitiveness, profitability, and market size based on this toolkit. These are complemented by clear and transparent explanations of the underlying datasets and methods. Worked examples using an easy-to-access online tool further empower readers to conduct their own assessments with custom data. Various frequently asked questions provide real-world examples and bust some of the most prevalent myths on energy storage. This book is aimed at both decision-makers that require key insights into the energy storage business and practitioners that want to perform their own analyses on the current and future cost and value of energy storage.
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