Flow tracing as a tool set for the analysis of networked large-scale renewable electricity systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a reformulated flow tracing method for large-scale renewable electricity systems, enabling detailed analysis of power flow origins and destinations, especially useful for systems with high renewable penetration.

Contribution

It presents a new reformulation of flow tracing applicable to complex renewable-dominated systems and demonstrates its application to regional and technological flow analysis.

Findings

Effective association of power flows to regions and technologies

Disentangling spatio-temporal import/export patterns

Application demonstrated on IEEE 118 bus network

Abstract

The method of flow tracing follows the power flow from net-generating sources through the network to the net-consuming sinks, which allows to assign the usage of the underlying transmission infrastructure to the system participants. This article presents a reformulation that is applicable to arbitrary compositions of inflow appearing naturally in models of large-scale electricity systems with a high share of renewable power generation. We propose an application which allows to associate power flows on the grid to specific regions or generation technologies, and emphasizes the capability of this technique to disentangle the spatio-temporal patterns of physical imports and exports occurring in such systems. The analytical potential of this method is showcased for a scenario based on the IEEE 118 bus network.