Large-scale integration of renewable energies and impact on storage demand in a European renewable power system of 2050—Sensitivity study

Abstract

Driven by decreasing prices for photovoltaic (PV) systems and incentive programs of different governments, almost 100 GW of PV and over 100 GW of wind turbines (WT) have been integrated in the European power system by 2014. In some areas, the electricity generation already exceeds the demand, curtailing generation or pushing the existing power transmission infrastructure to its limits in certain hours. In order to reach the European Commission's targets for 2050, the integration of renewable energies will require flexibility sources, independent of conventional generation, in order to provide standard security of supply. Together different flexibility sources will ensure the match between demand and supply at any given time. Energy storage systems can provide this flexibility by shifting the load temporally while transmission grids provide the shift of load spatially. Up to a certain extent, transmission capacity and storage capacity can replace each other, i.e. storage can reduce the load on transmission infrastructure by mitigating local peaks in load and/or generation. For the transition to a fully renewable energy system by 2050, major changes have to be achieved in the structure of the power system. The planning tool GENESYS is a holistic approach that optimises the allocation and size of different generation technologies, storage systems and transnational transmission corridors of a European power system. The source code for the mentioned tool is available free of charge under LGPL license. It can be freely parameterized by the user which allows the study of different power systems under individual assumptions with regard to load, generation potential and cost of the different system components. This publication will give an introduction to the planning methodology, the system model and the optimisation approach. Optimisation results obtained with GENESYS for a fully renewable electricity system for Europe and a cost structure expected for 2050 will be presented together with sensitivity analyses investigating main assumptions. Outcomes show the optimal allocation of PV and WT in a European power system, the resulting demand for storage capacities of different technologies and the capacity of the overlay grid.

Optimized demand side management (DSM) of peak electricity demand by coupling low temperature thermal energy storage (TES) and solar PV

“…cold TES and solar PV technologies together. In general, by the increase of solar PV share higher short-term TES is required which is also consistent with findings of other researchers[80]. In other words, the higher the dependency of energy system on the solar PV, the higher the storage is needed to ensure the security of electricity supply of the system without intermittency and hence avoid possible penalties.For instance, in case of using 1500 kWh of TES a total annual savings of 8945 € could be achieved.…”

Optimal combination of energy storages for prospective power supply systems based on Renewable Energy Sources

“…Like the need for the energy capacity of the storage devices rises with increasing share of RES penetration, so does the need for storage power. Using a holistic model with a hierarchical management approach, Bussar et al recently found that a renewable power supply system for the EU-MENA region (Europe, Middle East and North Africa) would be most economic with a combination of storage devices having a total discharging power on the same order as the peak load, whereupon long-term storage was also found to need higher charging power than discharging power [19]. Furthermore, the discharge power of the long-term storage was found to be higher than the combined discharge power of both short-term and medium-term storage [19], which stresses the importance of long-term storage in future power systems based on (V)RES.…”

Validation study of an approximate 2014 European power‐flow model using PowerGAMA

“…Due to these simplifications, the results of the analysis are considered optimistic in terms of the power system's ability to dispatch energy, and will therefore overestimate the capacity to accommodate renewable energy production. On the other hand, PowerGAMA takes the physical power flow into account, which is a significant advantage over the power market simulators that only consider energy balance, such as the EMPS 3 model. An in-depth explanation of how PowerGAMA works is given in the PowerGAMA User…”

“…Where equations (2)(3)(4)(5) are the constraints that delimit the variables. From the DC power flow equations [10], we have the power flow constraint (6), which describes the flow in the AC branches only.…”