Assessing Blackout Risk With High Penetration of Variable Renewable Energies

Benjamin A Carreras,Damia Gomila,Jose M Reynolds-Barredo,Pere Colet

doi:10.1109/access.2021.3114121

Abstract

We propose a method to analyze the risk of blackouts with high penetration of variable renewable energy sources (VRESs). We consider a model for the long-term evolution of the power grid including propagation of cascading failures, day-to-day fluctuations of renewable generation and moderate use of storage. We analyze grid resilience and stress as VRESs are progressively incorporated. We also evaluate the VRES performance as the average fraction of daily demand covered by renewables.We find that in general, VRES intrinsic variability increases the grid stress and the blackout risk. However, if VRESs are implemented in a distributed way, the spatial spreading of the generation may have a positive effect on grid resilience. As a case study, we analyze the replacement of conventional power plants by solar photovoltaic generation combined with storage in the power grid of the Balearic Islands. We also consider the use of source redundancy and briefly discuss the potential of wind energy.

Highlights

T HE necessity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change and reduce the dependence of modern society on hydrocarbons is progressively shifting the energy sector from conventional to renewable energy sources (RESs), especially in electricity production
The problems arising from integrating a high share of time variable RESs (VRESs) in the existing power grid are complex, and all studies agree on the need to include energy storage due to VRES intermittency
We focus on two main aspects: the increase in grid stress and possible degradation of its resilience due to an increasing number of blackouts and the VRES performance measured as the fraction of the demand that they cover

Summary

Introduction

T HE necessity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change and reduce the dependence of modern society on hydrocarbons is progressively shifting the energy sector from conventional to renewable energy sources (RESs), especially in electricity production. Countries worldwide have roadmaps to achieve a given percentage of renewable energy in their mix over the years or decades This energy transition is pressing on islands, where electricity production relies mostly on fossil fuels, despite the great RES potential of these islands. In the Balearic Islands, which we use as a case study in this work, it is estimated that to cover 100% of the electrical needs with photovoltaic energy, it would be necessary to occupy less than 2% of the total land [2]. In [6], for instance, the US power system is consid-

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