Assessing the Shortfall Risk of GB Electricity Grid using Shifts in Winter Weather Conditions

TL;DR

This paper presents a statistical approach to assess GB electricity grid risk by considering shifts in winter weather patterns, accounting for day-of-week effects and holidays to better evaluate resource adequacy during extreme weather events.

Contribution

It introduces a method for time-shifting weather data within the peak season to analyze its impact on supply-demand balance and resource adequacy in GB electricity grid.

Findings

Weather shifts significantly affect resource adequacy assessments.

Winter 2010-11's severity varies with weather-day alignment.

Considering day-of-week effects is crucial for accurate risk evaluation.

Abstract

Extreme weather events during peak winter periods drive resource adequacy risk in Great Britain (GB), with weather sensitivity of the supply-demand balance increasing through additional electric heating and wind generation. This work develops an approach of time-shifting weather within the peak season, through adjustment of the relevant terms in a statistical model for demand. This allows more complete consideration of the security of supply consequences of a weather series, as there will be relevant conditions where demand is suppressed due to weather occurring at a weekend or during the Christmas holiday. Results on a GB example show that consideration of this counterfactual is indeed important, and specifically that winter 2010-11 can either be the most severe in the dataset, or insignificant within the resource adequacy model, depending on the alignment of day-of-week with the weather series. Statistical interpretation of the shift model is discussed, which is straightforward for alignment of day-of-week with weather assuming that all seven alignments are equiprobable; but is more subtle for shifting weather in and out of Christmas, as there is no natural maximum on the realistic length of shift, but too large a shift may be physically unrealistic. It is likely that in all systems, assessment of a weather year's severity is incomplete without such consideration of the day-of-week effect; however, whether longer shifts of weather with respect to date need to be considered will depend on the presence of a major holiday (such as Christmas in GB) in the peak season.