On the road to 100% renewable energy systems in isolated islands

Alves, Maria Judite; Segurado, Raquel; Costa, Mário

doi:10.1016/j.energy.2020.117321

Cited by 74 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 28 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…3 The technical limitations, especially on noninterconnected islands originated in fluctuations in production due to sudden energy losses or even predicted power reductions due to diurnal resources variation, causing grid stability problems and mismatch between supply and demand. 4 Due to this fact, there is a constant necessity for rotating power reserves to cope up with and as a result, the maximum penetration of renewable energy sources is limited to a percentage of around 30%. This penetration limit is even lower in smaller islands as the distribution of RES is affected by the same microarea meteorological/ resource.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhancing the self‐resilience of high‐ renewable energy sources, interconnected islanding areas through innovative energy production, storage, and management technologies: Grid simulations and energy assessment

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Electrification of heating and transportation can be greatly combined with excess energy production from variable renewable energy sources that exist in many geographical islands. Grid interconnections, where available, play a vital role in the energy system as provide the required balance between energy consumption and demand but many limitations emerge due to cable capacity and other technical constraints, which in many cases, lead to curtailment events. With the minimization of the energy exchange through the cable between islands and the mainland, the islands' self-resilience is enhanced. The islands of Samsø and Orkney are used as the case studies where, among others, the specific technical solutions of (a) heat pump districting heating with heat storage, (b) electrolyzer for hydrogen production, and (c) electrical vehicles are examined. The proposed technical solutions are enhanced by Demand Side Management actions utilizing high renewable energy sources availability and curtailment events. The solutions are examined and compared with a reference/current status scenario for each island. This work is based on a detailed model representation, using Modelica language, of the transfer and distribution grid assets, allowing the estimation of the impact of the proposed electrification solutions to the grid level as well as the island level. Simulation results revealed that with the proposed actions in Orkney, annual energy export is reduced by 24 GWh but the corresponding energy imports are slightly increased by 13 GWh, reducing curtailment by 1.4 GWh (77%). As for Samsø, the energy imports are reduced by 5 GWh, while the energy imports increase by 2.0 GWh. Grid losses remain at the same level as before at around 2%, but some distribution lines have significantly lower energy traffic due to higher renewables self-consumption.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhancing the self‐resilience of high‐ renewable energy sources, interconnected islanding areas through innovative energy production, storage, and management technologies: Grid simulations and energy assessment

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This leads to high costs of supply as well as to well-known environmental issues (Lee et al, 2020). The use of local energy sources, such as wind, solar, and tidal energy can mitigate the fossil fuel consumption and reduce the island vulnerability (Alves et al, 2020). Nevertheless, the high intermittence of renewable energy sources (RES) slows the advance of the 100% renewable islands.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Supporting the Sustainable Energy Transition in the Canary Islands: Simulation and Optimization of Multiple Energy System Layouts and Economic Scenarios

Barone

Buonomano

Forzano

et al. 2021

Front. Sustain. Cities

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Canary Islands have great potential for the implementation of sustainable energy systems due to its availability of natural resources. The archipelago is not connected to the mainland electricity grid and the current generation system is mainly based on traditional fossil fuel. Therefore, the islands strongly dependent on fuel importations, with high costs due to logistics. Furthermore, due to the inadequate coverage of residential heating and cooling needs, the per capita energy consumption is far below the Spanish national average. This occurrence has inspired an intense debate on the current development model of the Canary Archipelago, which has led to the implementation of actions and measures aimed at achieving greater energy sustainability in the archipelago. Furthermore, at a local scale, an important investment plan has been carried out by the Spanish grid operator to ensure energy supply, to improve the system security and reliability, and to optimize the integration of renewable energies. Future measures and investments will be crucial to ensure a sustainable growth, both from the economic and the environment point of views. In this framework, this paper aims to discuss and compare the energy solutions, based on renewable energy technologies, identified to boost the sustainable transition of the islands. To this aim, multiple configurations of a wind power plant coupled with reversible hydro power/storage system for the distributed and on-site energy production in the island of Gran Canaria were modeled, simulated, and optimized by a TRNSYS/Matlab algorithm suitably developed. Specifically, along with the proposed system layouts, different scenarios related to diverse annual costs growth rate of fuel were investigated. The proposed analysis covers a time horizon of 20 years, up to 2040, and aims at assessing the impact of the investigated solution on energy demand, energy supply, and population incomes. Depending on the considered fuel cost growth rate, the best system configurations allow a primary energy saving in the range of 58.1–68.1%. Based on the system choice, the enterprise will generate significant revenues to the island population. The net present values are estimated in the range 1.50 × 103 ÷ 1.84 × 103 and 0.85 × 103 ÷ 1.27 × 103 M€, respectively for the two considered scenarios (annual costs growth rate of fuel 2 and −2%). The analysis demonstrates the importance of investments targeted at the implementation of renewables. The proposed scenarios indicate that the current energy model has the potential to radical change and to tackle climate change and energy issues while producing substantial economic savings and better life conditions for the population in the next years.

show abstract

“…The growing demand to increase the percentage of renewable energy and reduce diesel consumption led the distributor system operator (DSO) of micro-grids, as those of small islands, to carry out an analysis in order to verify the safety management of the power grid and to redesign it in case it does not satisfy the grid constraints. In such islands, several issues arise in terms of power system safe operation and planning [1][2][3][4][5][6][7], considering the specific characteristics of these kinds of distribution networks, which are relatively small, with a high variability between the winter and summer loads and not always sufficiently covered by public communication infrastructures. Apart from actual energy policies and regulatory frameworks, or technical capabilities enabled by advanced modeling and analysis tools, an important issue for effectively increasing the distributed generation and storage systems presence in distribution networks is the possibility for DSOs to achieve new simple and versatile tools for power system monitoring and management purposes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Virtual Tool for Load Flow Analysis in a Micro-Grid

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper proposes a virtual tool for load flow analysis in energy distribution systems of micro-grids. The solution is based on a low-cost measurement architecture, which entails low-voltage power measurements in each secondary substation and a voltage measurement at the beginning of the medium voltage (MV) feeder. The proposed virtual tool periodically queries these instruments to acquire the measurements. Then, it implements a backward–forward load flow algorithm, to evaluate the power flow in each branch and the voltage at each node. The virtual tool performances are validated using power measurements acquired at the beginning of each MV feeder. The uncertainties on each calculated quantity are also evaluated starting from the uncertainties due to the used measurement instruments. Moreover, the influence of the line parameter uncertainties on the evaluated quantities is also considered. The validated tool is useful for the online analysis of power flows and also for planning purposes, as it allows verifying the influence of future distributed generator power injection. In fact, the tool is able to off-line perform the load flow calculation in differently distributed generation scenarios. The micro-grid of Favignana Island was used as a case study to test the developed virtual tool.

show abstract

On the road to 100% renewable energy systems in isolated islands

Cited by 74 publications

References 28 publications

Enhancing the self‐resilience of high‐ renewable energy sources, interconnected islanding areas through innovative energy production, storage, and management technologies: Grid simulations and energy assessment

Enhancing the self‐resilience of high‐ renewable energy sources, interconnected islanding areas through innovative energy production, storage, and management technologies: Grid simulations and energy assessment

Supporting the Sustainable Energy Transition in the Canary Islands: Simulation and Optimization of Multiple Energy System Layouts and Economic Scenarios

A Virtual Tool for Load Flow Analysis in a Micro-Grid

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About