Integration of Renewable Energy Sources in future power systems: The role of storage

By S. Weitemeyer, D. Kleinhans, T. Vogt, C. Agert. 2014

472 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Integrating a high share of electricity from non-dispatchable Renewable Energy Sources in a power supply system is a challenging task. One option considered in many studies dealing with prospective power systems is the installation of storage devices to balance the fluctuations in power production. However, it is not yet clear how soon storage devices will be needed and how the integration process depends on different storage parameters. Using long-term solar and wind energy power production data series, we present a modelling approach to investigate the influence of storage size and efficiency on the pathway towards a 100% RES scenario. Applying our approach to data for Germany, we found that up to 50% of the overall electricity demand can be met by an optimum combination of wind and solar resources without both curtailment and storage devices if the remaining energy is provided by sufficiently flexible power plants. Our findings show further that the installation of small, but highly efficient storage devices is already highly beneficial for the RES integration, while seasonal storage devices are only needed when more than 80% of the electricity demand can be met by wind and solar energy. Our results imply that a compromise between the installation of additional generation capacities and storage capacities is required.

Subfields: Control and Systems Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/91bd4d6f6e5a9574dfef292ff778a55d17e5ddd6

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In Control and Systems Engineering

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Citations in the corpus

How to meet EU GHG emission reduction targets? A model based decarbonization pathway for Europe's electricity supply system until 2050 (2017, background): “’s modeling approaches build on previous modeling that can be categorized as weather-driven energy system modeling [34, 35, 36].”
A review on the complementarity of renewable energy sources: Concept, metrics, application and future research directions (2019, background): “Over the recent years many investigations have been focus on this VRES grid integration [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7].”
Heat storage materials, geometry and applications: A review (2017, background): “Energy recovery systems also encountered with the problem of utilization and availability of energy at different time intervals and hence require energy storage systems for uninterrupted power supply [1,2].”
Power systems with high renewable energy sources: A review of inertia and frequency control strategies over time (2019, background): “half of the overall electricity demand can be provided by RES [5, 6], despite the fact that it is expected that future electrical grids will be based on RES, distributed generation and power electronics [7].”
European electricity sector decarbonization under different levels of foresight (2019, background): “[58] therefore in particular stresses the need for seasonal storages in such system configurations.”
Assessing vulnerabilities and limits in the transition to renewable energies: Land requirements under 100% solar energy scenarios (2017, background): “[112] with an hourly resolution study for Germany, while a 50–80% share of intermittent renewable sources may require relatively low levels of storage and overcapacity, a system 100% based on intermittent sources substantially increases these requirements, i.”
On the History and Future of 100% Renewable Energy Systems Research (2022, background): “of new studies concretely dealing with the design of a 100% RE scenario for Germany such as [97], [159]–[164], linking to earlier studies preparing the ground [71], [155], [165], [166].”
An economic feasibility assessment of decoupled energy storage in the UK: With liquid air energy storage as a case study (2018, background): “Large-capacity energy storage is now widely recognised as one of the technologies with most potential for the successful integration of renewable electricity generation [(Bird et al., 2013), (Luo et al., 2015), (Weitemeyer et al., 2015), etc.].”