In the context of the energy transition, energy system planning is becoming increasingly relevant for decentralized systems. Motivated by the strong increase of publications on municipal energy ...system planning (MESP), these studies are subjected to a bibliometric analysis in this paper. The 1235 articles, which are based on the Web of Science database, are examined using the R-tool bibliometrix. The study shows that China is the most important contributor with 225 articles, followed by the USA (205) and Germany (120). Most cross-country collaborations were conducted between China and Canada, focusing mainly on uncertainties in MESP. Among the institutions, the North China Electric Power University is responsible for most articles (42). The core journals on MESP are Energy, Applied Energy, Energy Policy, Energies and Renewable Energy, which published 37% of the 1235 articles. Publications on MESP focus on renewable energies, optimization and hybrid energy systems. Furthermore, district heating seems to be a core topic in MESP and is addressed in three of the top five most cited articles. The demonstration of global research trends in MESP can support researchers in identifying the relevant issues regarding this expanding and transforming research area.
The rapid uptake of renewable energy technologies in recent decades has increased the demand of energy researchers, policymakers and energy planners for reliable data on the spatial distribution of ...their costs and potentials. For onshore wind energy this has resulted in an active research field devoted to analysing these resources for regions, countries or globally. A particular thread of this research attempts to go beyond purely technical or spatial restrictions and determine the realistic, feasible or actual potential for wind energy. Motivated by these developments, this paper reviews methods and assumptions for analysing geographical, technical, economic and, finally, feasible onshore wind potentials. We address each of these potentials in turn, including aspects related to land eligibility criteria, energy meteorology, and technical developments of wind turbine characteristics such as power density, specific rotor power and spacing aspects. Economic aspects of potential assessments are central to future deployment and are discussed on a turbine and system level covering levelized costs depending on locations, and the system integration costs which are often overlooked in such analyses. Non-technical approaches include scenicness assessments of the landscape, constraints due to regulation or public opposition, expert and stakeholder workshops, willingness to pay/accept elicitations and socioeconomic cost-benefit studies. For each of these different potential estimations, the state of the art is critically discussed, with an attempt to derive best practice recommendations and highlight avenues for future research.
•Review of over 300 studies on large-scale onshore wind potential assessments.•Analysis of geographic, technical, economic and ‘feasible’ potentials.•Identify weaknesses in methods and best practice examples.•Methods could improve transparency, validation, and sensitivities.•Further interdisciplinary research required on ‘feasible’ potentials.
Abstract
The required acceleration of onshore wind deployment requires the consideration of both economic and social criteria. With a spatially explicit analysis of the validated European turbine ...stock, we show that historical siting focused on cost-effectiveness of turbines and minimization of local disamenities, resulting in substantial regional inequalities. A multi-criteria turbine allocation approach demonstrates in 180 different scenarios that strong trade-offs have to be made in the future expansion by 2050. The sites of additional onshore wind turbines can be associated with up to 43% lower costs on average, up to 42% higher regional equality, or up to 93% less affected population than at existing turbine locations. Depending on the capacity generation target, repowering decisions and spatial scale for siting, the mean costs increase by at least 18% if the affected population is minimized — even more so if regional equality is maximized. Meaningful regulations that compensate the affected regions for neglecting one of the criteria are urgently needed.
Research attention on decentralized autonomous energy systems has increased exponentially in the past three decades, as demonstrated by the absolute number of publications and the share of these ...studies in the corpus of energy system modelling literature. This paper shows the status quo and future modelling needs for research on local autonomous energy systems. A total of 359 studies are investigated, of which a subset of 123 in detail. The studies are assessed with respect to the characteristics of their methodology and applications, in order to derive common trends and insights. Most case studies apply to middle-income countries and only focus on the supply of electricity in the residential sector. Furthermore, many of the studies are comparable regarding objectives and applied methods. Local energy autonomy is associated with high costs, leading to levelized costs of electricity of 0.41 $/kWh on average. By analysing the studies, many improvements for future studies could be identified: the studies lack an analysis of the impact of autonomous energy systems on surrounding energy systems. In addition, the robust design of autonomous energy systems requires higher time resolutions and extreme conditions. Future research should also develop methodologies to consider local stakeholders and their preferences for energy systems.
•Literature review includes 123 studies about local autonomous energy systems.•Mainly simulation or optimization with a central planner perspective.•The most common models HOMER and EnergyPLAN should be extended in future studies.•Levelized costs of electricity for local energy autonomy are 0.41 $/kWh on average.•Future work should focus on non-technical dimensions, open models and data.
•Comprehensive analysis of 195 large-scale wind potential assessments conducted since 2012.•Investigation of scientific reproducibility aspects in the existing literature.•Thorough exploration of ...common challenges in wind assessment methodologies.•Proposal of best practices and identification of future research directions.•Emphasis on the importance of practical research outcomes in real-world scenarios.
The accurate quantification and assessment of available renewable energy resources has emerged as a research topic with high relevance to policymakers and industry. Motivated by the need for a contemporary review on the methodologies and practices prevalent in wind resource assessments, we employ a systematic analysis of 195 articles that describe large-scale wind assessments. Our review reveals significant heterogeneity in global and continental-scale potentials and geographical bias of research towards the Northern Hemisphere, despite electrification needs in regions like Africa and Latin America. A fraction of the literature attempts to explicitly include social and political barriers to wind power development, thereby defining ‘feasible’ potentials. We delve into advancements in this domain, focusing on innovative methodologies that encapsulate the viewpoints of subject experts and stakeholders in the assessment process. Our analysis underscores pressing challenges relating to data sharing and scientific reproducibility, with our findings revealing a mere 10 % of studies that offer openly available data for download. This highlights a pervasive insufficiency in the reproducibility of wind assessments. Additionally, we tackle notable hurdles concerning wind data and meteorological characterization, including an over-reliance on single-source wind data and a deficit in adequately characterizing temporal wind variability. Relatedly, we uncover a highly heterogenous approach to turbine siting and characterizing wake-related losses. These methods are frequently simplistic, potentially leading to an overestimation of wind potentials by assuming an overly optimistic capacity density. In each of these domains, we discuss the state of the art for modern wind resource assessments, propose best practices, and pinpoint crucial areas warranting future research.
•Investigation into factors influencing thermal storage uptake in the electrical network conducted.•Study using the German electrical grid as a reference.•Lithium-ion and pumped thermal storage both ...are part of the least-cost network.•Lithium-ion and pumped thermal work on a daily basis, whereas, hydrogen storage works on a seasonal basis.•Beneficial influences for thermal storage uptake include increased lithium-ion storage costs, reduced thermal storage costs, increased PV costs, and reduced wind costs.
Modeling tools and technologies that will allow reaching decarbonization goals in the most cost-effective way are imperative for the transition to a climate-friendly energy system. This includes models which are able to optimize the design of energy systems with a large number of spatially distributed energy generation sources coupled with adequate short, medium, and long duration storage technologies. Solar photovoltaic and wind energy are likely to become the backbone in a future greenhouse gas neutral energy system and will require low-cost, geographically independent storage technologies in order to balance their intermittent availability. As an alternative to lithium-ion batteries and hydrogen systems, thermal energy storage coupled with a power block (e.g., Carnot batteries, pumped thermal storage, etc.) could be a promising option. Therefore, the current study aims to investigate the influence of renewable generation profiles coupled with alternate storage options (i.e., Li-ion and hydrogen cavern) on the installed capacity of electric-to-thermal-to-electric systems using a 100% renewable electricity system in Germany as a case study. The analyses reveal that Carnot batteries complement established and near-future storage technologies, as they could fill the gap between daily storage such as batteries and seasonal storage such as hydrogen salt caverns. Furthermore, Carnot Batteries could offer multiple options for heat integration further increasing their potential.
•Analysis of existing turbine stock shows focus on costs and scenicness in the past.•General trade-off between cost-efficiency and landscape impact is weak in Germany.•This trade-off is higher for ...smaller regions especially in southern federal states.•Regionally even distribution relates to higher costs and lower planning flexibility.•“South quota” cannot be met if still focussing on cost-efficiency and landscape impact.
Onshore wind development has historically focused on cost-efficiency, which may lead to uneven turbine distributions and public resistance due to landscape impacts. Using a multi-criteria planning approach, we show how onshore wind capacity targets can be achieved by 2050 in a cost-efficient, visually unobtrusive and evenly distributed way. For the case study of Germany, we build on the existing turbine stock and use open data on technically feasible turbine locations and data on scenicness of landscapes to plan the optimal expansion. The analysis shows that while the trade-off between optimizing either cost-efficiency or landscape impact of the turbines is rather weak with about 15% higher costs or scenicness, an even distribution has a large impact on these criteria. However, a more evenly distributed expansion is necessary for the achievement of the targeted south quota, a policy target that calls for more wind turbine additions in southern Germany. Our analysis assists stakeholders in resolving the onshore wind expansion trilemma.
•Modeling of deep geothermal plants for electricity, heat and lithium supply.•Energy system optimization of 330 municipalities in the Upper Rhine Graben, Germany.•Geothermal plants mainly used for ...district heating rather than electricity supply.•Cost-competitive hybrid geothermal plants mainly displace rooftop PV from systems.•Sustainable lithium extraction with great potential impact on global supply chains.
Lithium is a critical material for the energy transition, but conventional procurement methods have significant environmental impacts. In this study, we utilize regional energy system optimizations to investigate the techno-economic potential of the low-carbon alternative of direct lithium extraction in deep geothermal plants. We show that geothermal plants will become cost-competitive in conjunction with lithium extraction, even under unfavorable conditions and partially displace photovoltaics, wind power, and storage from future renewable energy systems. Our analysis indicates that the deployment of 33 deep geothermal plants in municipalities in the Upper Rhine Graben area in Germany could provide enough lithium to produce about 1.2 million electric vehicle battery packs per year, equivalent to 70% of today`s annual electric vehicle registrations in the European Union. As this number represents only a small fraction of the techno-economic potential in Germany, this lithium extraction process could offer significant environmental benefits. High potential for mass application also exists in other countries, such as the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Italy, highlighting the importance of further research and development of this technology.
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•Reviewing flexibility and robustness in local, integrated energy system models.•Flexibility is introduced by storage and sector coupling, DSM is rare.•Transport integration and the flexibility ...potential of EVs receive little attention.•Reporting metrics beyond cost and emissions provides additional decision-support.•Uncertainty assessments are overwhelmingly deterministic, mainly using scenarios.
The electrification of heating, cooling, and transportation to reach decarbonization targets calls for a rapid expansion of renewable technologies. Due to their decentral and intermittent nature, these technologies require robust planning that considers non-technical constraints and flexibility options to be integrated effectively. Energy system models (ESMs) are frequently used to support decision-makers in this planning process. In this study, 116 case studies of local, integrated ESMs are systematically reviewed to identify best-practice approaches to model flexibility and address non-technical constraints. Within the sample, storage systems and sector coupling are the most common types of flexibility. Sector coupling with the transportation sector is rarely considered, specifically with electric vehicles even though they could be used for smart charging or vehicle-to-grid operation. Social aspects are generally either completely neglected or modeled exogenously. Lacking actor heterogeneity, which can lead to unstable results in optimization models, can be addressed through building-level information. A strong emphasis on cost is found and while emissions are also frequently reported, additional metrics such as imports or the share of renewable generation are nearly entirely absent. To guide future modeling, the paper concludes with a roadmap highlighting flexibility and robustness options that either represent low-hanging fruit or have a large impact on results.
The assessment of rooftop photovoltaic potential has become increasingly accurate due to the expanding availability of satellite imagery and improvements in computer vision methods. However, the ...analysis of satellite imagery is impeded by a lack of transparency, reproducibility, and standardized description of the methods employed. Studies are heterogeneous, target different types of potential with redundant efforts, and are mostly not open source or use private datasets for training. With respect to the estimation of photovoltaic potential, this study proposes a conceptual frame of reference for clearly identifying tasks, their relationships, and their data. Additionally, the open-source workflow ETHOS.PASSION is introduced, which integrates the assessment of geographical, technical and economic potentials of regions under consideration along with the calculation of surface areas, orientations and slopes of individual rooftop sections. ETHOS.PASSION also includes the detection of superstructures, i.e., obstacles such as windows or existing photovoltaic installations. The novel two-look approach combines two deep learning models identifying rooftops and sections, and an additional model for the identification of superstructures. The three models show a mean Intersection Over Union between classes of 0.8478, 0.7531 and 0.4927 respectively, and more importantly display consistent results amongst randomly sampled real world images. The final results are evaluated for multiple datasets and compared against other studies, with a case study in the Aachen region of Germany being presented.
•Definition of a conceptual workflow for rooftop photovoltaic potential assessment.•Introduction of ETHOS.PASSION as an open-source, scalable and robust workflow.•Open-source model for rooftop potentials with state-of-the-art performance.•Development of three neural networks that are integrated into a two-look approach.•Benchmarking of the workflow results with the most popular available datasets.
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