Air Quality Impacts of Distributed Energy Resources Implemented in the Northeastern United States

Abstract

Emissions from the potential installation of distributed energy resources (DER) in the place of current utility-scale power generators have been introduced into an emissions inventory of the northeastern United States. A methodology for predicting future market penetration of DER that considers economics and emission factors was used to estimate the most likely implementation of DER. The methodology results in spatially and temporally resolved emission profiles of criteria pollutants that are subsequently introduced into a detailed atmospheric chemistry and transport model of the region. The DER technology determined by the methodology includes 62% reciprocating engines, 34% gas turbines, and 4% fuel cells and other emerging technologies. The introduction of DER leads to retirement of 2625 MW of existing power plants for which emissions are removed from the inventory. The air quality model predicts maximum differences in air pollutant concentrations that are located downwind from the central power plants that were removed from the domain. Maximum decreases in hourly peak ozone concentrations due to DER use are 10 ppb and are located over the state of New Jersey. Maximum decreases in 24-hr average fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations reach 3 microg/m3 and are located off the coast of New Jersey and New York. The main contribution to decreased PM2.5 is the reduction of sulfate levels due to significant reductions in direct emissions of sulfur oxides (SO(x)) from the DER compared with the central power plants removed. The scenario presented here represents an accelerated DER penetration case with aggressive emission reductions due to removal of highly emitting power plants. Such scenario provides an upper bound for air quality benefits of DER implementation scenarios.

Future Impacts of Distributed Power Generation on Ambient Ozone and Particulate Matter Concentrations in the San Joaquin Valley of California

“…The impacts of DG in the SJV complement the findings in previous studies on DG in other areas in the United States, in southern California (Rodriguez et al 48 ) and northeastern United States (Carreras-Sospedra et al 4 ). Several scenarios of adoption of DG power in the SJV for the year 2023 are developed by varying aggregate DG power, emission specifications of DG technologies, and level of avoided emissions due to the combined heating and power applications of DG power.…”

“…This study concluded that deployment of DG technologies to meet 10% of increased power demand leads to ozone increases on the order of 1 ppb and PM by 1 mg/m 3 . More recently, Carreras-Sospedra et al 4 applied the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model to study air quality effects of DG deployment to replace highly polluting central plants in northeastern United States and concluded that significant air quality benefits can be realized through DG.…”

“…[1][2][3][4] For example, DG systems have potential to supply high-quality power with greater reliability to commercial, industrial, and residential facilities, especially for mission critical applications. The use of combined heat and power (CHP) applications with DG units significantly increases overall energy efficiency and provides environmental benefits.…”

The air quality and human health effects of integrating utility-scale batteries into the New York State electricity grid

“…Depending on the magnitude, location and type of DG, they found decreases and increases in ambient concentrations of O 3 and PM 2.5 [9]. Carreras-Sospedra et al ran similar scenarios in the Northeast United States, but retired older base-load generation such as pulverized coal plants [10]. By contrast to Rodriguez et al [9], O 3 and PM 2.5 decreased in these scenarios.…”

The assessment of two different pollutants dispersion from a coal-fired power plant for various thermal regimes

“…Park et al [47] continued consideration of the use of electron beam technology (EB) used to simultaneously remove SO 2 and NO x from the combustion components of flue gases emitted from a power plant. Emissions primarily depend on the type of fuel burned at power plants: solid fuel leads to a high concentration of emissions [41,48,60], another type of power plant fuel is natural gas, the emissions effects of which were investigated by [10,23,46] compared different emission generation scenarios (point and mobile sources) from a power plant, using a 3D microscale model of chemical transport, as the distribution of pollutants studied in the mesome scale models does not allow to solve high gradients of air pollution. The use of parameterized microscale models such as OSPM [6], SIRANE [57] or ADMS-URBAN [52] is widely used for air quality modeling.…”