Optimising the European transmission system for 77% renewable electricity by 2030

Abstract

To spur Europe to meet ambitious CO 2 emission reduction targets, Greenpeace has developed scenarios for each country to increase its electricity generation from renewable sources. Energynautics was commissioned by Greenpeace to model and optimise the grid extensions in Europe necessary to integrate these large shares of renewables (77% of the total electricity supply by 2030, including 53% from wind and solar). The results and further analysis of the data are presented here. It was found that by preferring high voltage direct current rather than alternating current network extensions, the overall grid upgrades in Europe (measured as the length of new transmission lines) can be reduced by a third. By allowing a small amount of curtailment of variable renewable sources, a disproportionately large number of the necessary grid extensions can be avoided. In addition, the accuracy of decoupling active from reactive power flows is analysed.

More homogeneous wind conditions under strong climate change decrease the potential for inter-state balancing of electricity in Europe

“…However, storage assets are more costly than grid expansion (Schlachtberger et al, 2017;Brown et al, 2016). Since a cost-optimal solution will thus favor grid expansion, we focus on spatial effects and transnational balancing.…”

“…With a share of around 35 % of current emissions being caused by the electricity system (Bruckner et al, 2014), its decarbonization is the key to any mitigation strategy. However, today's pledges are not yet sufficient to limit warming to below 2 • C, not to mention 1.5 • C .…”

“…It is thus necessary to consider indicators such as the variability and synchronicity of generation in addition to total energy yields Bruckner et al, 2014;Bloomfield et al, 2016). Several validated time series of renewable generation based on reanalysis data are available to assess the power system operation Staffell and Pfenninger, 2016;Gonzalez Aparcio et al, 2016).…”

PowerGAMA: A new simplified modelling approach for analyses of large interconnected power systems, applied to a 2030 Western Mediterranean case study

“…The variables (9) are not free, but constrained through upper and lower bounds, and through equations expressing relationships between them. Referring to these constraints as C m , the optimisation problem is formulated in the standard Linear Programming (LP) form…”

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6] Different aspects are considered, such as optimisation of generation mix 3,4 and storage, 2,7 and transmission planning. 1,[8][9][10][11] Often in this type of studies, the transmission grid is considered only at a highly aggregated level, and the constraints implied by the physical power flow equations are ignored.…”