Definition of scenarios for modern power systems with a high renewable energy share

TL;DR

This paper explores various energy system scenarios with high renewable shares, analyzing the roles of different technologies and system elements to ensure stability, demand matching, and economic feasibility in future power grids.

Contribution

It introduces an optimization-based approach to quantify and compare diverse high-renewable energy scenarios considering new system elements and regional data.

Findings

PV and wind are key renewable sources but lack flexibility.

Solar thermal and pumped hydro are crucial for flexibility.

High share scenarios require diverse technologies for stability.

Abstract

Recent environmental policies have led many academic, industrial and governmental stakeholders to design and plan scenarios with very high share of renewable energy sources (RES). New system elements such as High-voltage Direct Current (HVDC) transmission, Microgrids, Virtual Power Plants (VPP) and Dynamic Virtual Power Plants (DVPP) are being increasingly studied with respect to their contribution to integrate future RES plants in the main grid. Several future scenarios are being analysed for each system and region, to ensure that the future energy systems, composed mostly of RES, can remain stable, match the demand during the seasonal variations across the year and are economically feasible. In this article, different types of energy scenarios are considered to obtain a range of options in terms of size, renewable generation technologies, and electrical network configuration. The scenarios were studied in the context of the POSYTYF project and were quantified through an optimization-based algorithm, using specific locations in Europe, and real data related to the availability of different RES, as well as the demand. It has been shown that photovoltaic (PV) and wind generation can provide the renewable backbone but they lack the flexibility needed to achieve a very high share in the energy mix. Other technologies, such as solar thermal and pumped hydro, become important to cover the last range of integration, as they provide a high flexibility, which is crucial for high share.