Quantifying the increasing sensitivity of power systems to climate variability

Bloomfield, Hannah; Brayshaw, David; Shaffrey, Len; Coker, Phil; Thornton, Hazel

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/11/12/124025

Cited by 107 publications

(99 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Note that in some countries the total load data may include a contribution from embedded renewable generation, which should be noted in the interpretation of results. This approach is very similar to that used in previous studies (Bloomfield et al ., , ) and validates well against observations on daily timescales with R 2 > 0.86 for all countries, and an average root mean square error (RMSE) of 7% of the national‐aggregate demand in all cases. For full details of the regression co‐efficients and corresponding skill scores, see Supporting Information File S1.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Characterizing the winter meteorological drivers of the European electricity system using targeted circulation types

Bloomfield

Brayshaw

Charlton‐Perez

2019

Meteorological Applications

125

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Renewable electricity is a key enabling step in the decarbonization of energy. Europe is at the forefront of renewable deployment and this has dramatically increased the weather sensitivity of the continent's power systems. Despite the importance of weather to energy systems, and widespread interest from both academia and industry, the meteorological drivers of European power systems remain difficult to identify and are poorly understood. The present study presents a new and generally applicable approach, targeted circulation types (TCTs). In contrast to standard meteorological weather‐regime or circulation‐typing schemes, TCTs convolve the weather sensitivity of an impacted system of interest (in this case, the electricity system) with the intrinsic structures of the atmospheric circulation to identify its meteorological drivers. A new 38 year reconstruction of daily electricity demand and renewable supply across Europe is used to identify the winter large‐scale circulation patterns of most interest to the European electricity grid. TCTs provide greater explanatory power for power system variability and extremes compared with standard meteorological typing. Two new pairs of atmospheric patterns are highlighted, both of which have marked and extensive impacts on the European power system. The first pair resembles the meridional surface pressure dipole of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), but shifted eastward into Europe and noticeably strengthened, while the second pair is weaker and corresponds to surface pressure anomalies over Central Southern and Eastern Europe. While these gross qualitative patterns are robust features of the present European power systems, the detailed circulation structures are strongly affected by the amount and location of renewables installed.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Characterizing the winter meteorological drivers of the European electricity system using targeted circulation types

Bloomfield

Brayshaw

Charlton‐Perez

2019

Meteorological Applications

125

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“…Bloomfield et al [38] model a simplified British power system across several decades but only consider wind power, neglecting the increasingly important role of PV; Pfenninger [31] examines the inter-annual variability of both wind and PV over 25 years in a UK power system model. However, none of these studies consider the influence of weather on power demand.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The increasing impact of weather on electricity supply and demand

Staffell

Pfenninger

2018

Energy

254

109

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a b s t r a c tWind and solar power have experienced rapid cost declines and are being deployed at scale. However, their output variability remains a key problem for managing electricity systems, and the implications of multi-day to multi-year variability are still poorly understood. As other energy-using sectors are electrified, the shape and variability of electricity demand will also change. We develop an open framework for quantifying the impacts of weather on electricity supply and demand using the Renewables.ninja and DESSTINEE models. We demonstrate this using a case study of Britain using National Grid's Two Degrees scenario forwards to 2030.We find the British electricity system is rapidly moving into unprecedented territory, with peak demand rising above 70 GW due to electric heating, and intermittent renewable output exceeding demand as early as 2021. Hourly ramp-rates widen by 50% and year-to-year variability increases by 80%, showing why future power system studies must consider multiple years of data, and the influence of weather on both supply and demand. Our framework is globally applicable, and allows detailed scenarios of hourly electricity supply and demand to be explored using only limited input data such as annual quantities from government scenarios or broader energy systems models.

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“…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).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2017

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Abstract. Limiting anthropogenic climate change requires the fast decarbonization of the electricity system. Renewable electricity generation is determined by the weather and is hence subject to climate change. We simulate the operation of a coarse-scale fully renewable European electricity system based on downscaled highresolution climate data from EURO-CORDEX. Following a high-emission pathway (RCP8.5), we find a robust but modest increase (up to 7 %) of backup energy in Europe through the end of the 21st century. The absolute increase in the backup energy is almost independent of potential grid expansion, leading to the paradoxical effect that relative impacts of climate change increase in a highly interconnected European system. The increase is rooted in more homogeneous wind conditions over Europe resulting in intensified simultaneous generation shortfalls. Individual country contributions to European generation shortfall increase by up to 9 TWh yr −1 , reflecting an increase of up to 4 %. Our results are strengthened by comparison with a large CMIP5 ensemble using an approach based on circulation weather types.

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Quantifying the increasing sensitivity of power systems to climate variability

Cited by 107 publications

References 38 publications

Characterizing the winter meteorological drivers of the European electricity system using targeted circulation types

Characterizing the winter meteorological drivers of the European electricity system using targeted circulation types

The increasing impact of weather on electricity supply and demand

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

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