Abstract
1- Introduction
2- Methods
3- Results
4- Limitations
5- Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Appendix A. Supplementary data
References
Abstract
This paper discusses the impact of bulk electric storage on the production from dispatchable power plants for rising variable renewable electricity shares. Two complementary optimization frameworks are used to represent power systems with a varying degree of complexity. The corresponding models approximate the wholesale electricity market, combined with the rational retirement of dispatchable capacity. Two different generic storage technologies are introduced exogenously to assess their impact on the system.
The analysis covers two countries: France, where the power supply’s large nuclear share allows for the discussion of storage impact on a single generator type; and Germany, whose diverse power supply structure enables storage interactions with multiple electricity generators. In the most general case, additional storage capacity increases dispatchable power production (e.g. nuclear, coal) for small wind and solar shares, i.e. it compensates the replacement induced by renewable energies. For larger variable renewable electricity volumes, it actively contributes to dispatchable power replacement. In a diverse power system, this results in storage-induced sequential mutual replacements of power generation from different plant types, as wind and solar capacities are increased.
This mechanism is strongly dependent on the technical parameters of the storage assets. As a result, the impact of different storage types can have opposite signs under certain circumstances. The influence of CO2 emission prices, wind and solar profile shapes, and power plant ramping costs is discussed.
Introduction
Todecarbonize the electricity sector, windandphotovoltaic (PV) power are likely to cover increasing shares of future electricity production (Creutzig et al., 2017; Luderer et al., 2017). To cope with the inherently variable nature of these renewable resources, their integration requires additional system flexibility (International Energy Agency, 2018). This flexibility is necessary in order to follow steeper loadramps (Huber et al., 2014),tomanage short-termpowerfluctuations (International Energy Agency, 2018), and to counteract the market value erosion of resources with inflexible profiles (Hirth, 2013). Ultimately, very high shares of variable renewable electricity (VRE) require the system to absorb otherwise curtailed peak generation (Denholm and Hand, 2011; Després et al., 2017).