Transmission grid extensions for the integration of variable renewable energies in Europe: Who benefits where?

Abstract

Variable renewable energy (VRE) generation from wind and sun is growing quickly in Europe. Already today, VRE's power contribution is at times close to the total demand in some regions with severe consequences for the remainder of the power system. Grid extensions are necessary for the physical integration of VRE, i.e., for power transports, but they also have important economic consequences for all power system participants.We employ a regional, power system model to examine the role of grid extensions for the market effects of VRE in Europe. We derive cost-optimal macroscopic transmission grid extensions for the projected wind and solar capacities in Europe in 2020 and characterize their effects on the power system with high regional and technological resolution.Without grid extensions, lower electricity prices, new price dynamics and reduced full load hours for conventional generation technologies result in * k.schaber@tum.de Preprint submitted to Energy PolicyDecember 22, 2011 proximity to high VRE capacities. This leads to substantial changes in the projected achievable revenues of utilities. Grid extensions partially alleviate and redistribute these effects, mainly for the benefit of baseload and the VRE technologies themselves.

The Social Costs of Electricity Generation—Categorising Different Types of Costs and Evaluating Their Respective Relevance

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Principal Mismatch Patterns Across a Simplified Highly Renewable European Electricity Network

“…Weather data covering multiple years are converted into prospective wind and solar power generation with good spatial and temporal resolution [21,22,[30][31][32], and are then used as the driving force in networked electricty system models. This modelling approach has produced estimates on the required amount of conventional backup power plants, transmission lines and storage [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][33][34][35][36][37][38]. Also the optimization of levelized system cost of energy has been addressed and has led to new design concepts, such as the optimal heterogeneity and the benefit of cooperation [29,[39][40][41][42].…”

“…Weather-driven network modelling represents a more direct approach to obtain estimates on the required backup infrastructure of highly renewable large-scale energy systems [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. Weather data covering multiple years are converted into prospective wind and solar power generation with good spatial and temporal resolution [21,22,[30][31][32], and are then used as the driving force in networked electricty system models.…”

Localized vs. synchronized exports across a highly renewable pan‐European transmission network

“…At the moment, it is unclear what will be the best transitional pathway between the current and the future energy system. In this respect, it makes sense to think backwards, which means in a first step to get a good understanding of fully renewable energy systems [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] and then in a second step bridge to today's energy system [20,21]. Since wind and solar power generation are expected to be dominant, the fluctuating spatio-temporal weather patterns will determine the design of highly renewable energy systems.…”