Power Systems Without Fuel

TL;DR

This paper thoroughly investigates fuel-free renewable power systems, highlighting their advantages, technical challenges, and the need for new models and control methods to manage renewable energy sources effectively.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of the technical and economic aspects of fuel-free renewable power systems, emphasizing the need for new system models and control strategies.

Findings

Fuel-free systems reduce environmental impact.

Unit commitment becomes irrelevant without large fuel-based generators.

New control methods are needed for semiconductor energy interfaces.

Abstract

The finiteness of fossil fuels implies that future electric power systems may predominantly source energy from fuel-free renewable resources like wind and solar. Evidently, these power systems without fuel will be environmentally benign, sustainable, and subject to milder failure scenarios. Many of these advantages were projected decades ago with the definition of the soft energy path, which describes a future where all energy is provided by numerous small, simple, and diverse renewable sources. Here we provide a thorough investigation of power systems without fuel from technical and economic standpoints. The paper is organized by timescale and covers issues like the irrelevance of unit commitment in networks without large, fuel-based generators, the dubiousness of nodal pricing without fuel costs, and the need for new system-level models and control methods for semiconductor-based energy-conversion interfaces.