Balancing Electricity Supply and Demand in a Carbon-Neutral Northern Europe

Abstract

This work investigates how to balance the electricity supply and demand in a carbon-neutral northern Europe. Applying a cost-minimizing electricity system model including options to invest in eleven different flexibility measures, cost-efficient combinations of strategies to manage varia-tions are identified. The results of the model are post-processed using a novel method to map the net load before and after flexibility measures are applied to reveal the contribution of each flexi-bility measure.
 The net load is mapped in the space spanned by the amplitude, duration, and number of occur-rences. The mapping shows that, depending on cost structure, flexibility measures contribute to reduce the net load in three different ways; 1) by reducing variations of long duration but low amplitude, 2) by reducing variations of high amplitude but short duration and low occurrence or 3) by reducing variations of high amplitude, short duration and high occurrence. It is found that cost-efficient variation management is achieved by combining wind and solar power and by combining strategies (1-3) to manage variations. The cost-efficient combination of strategies de-pends on electricity system context where electricity trade, flexible hydrogen and heat production (1) manage the majority of variations in regions with good conditions for wind power while sta-tionary batteries (3) are the main contributors in regions with good conditions for solar power.

Which wind turbine types are needed in a cost‐optimal renewable energy system?

“…To visualize such variations, a metric developed by Göransson and colleagues 24 is used. The net load is categorized according to its duration, amplitude and occurrence frequency.…”

“…The exact calculation procedure for the variables can be found in the publication by Göransson. 24 The metric is not part of the optimization problem itself, rather it is used to quantify final variations in net load and explain the difference caused by the turbine types.…”