Benchmarking sustainability of Indian electricity system: An indicator approach

The greatest sustainability challenge facing humanity today is the greenhouse gas emissions and the global climate change with fossil fuels led by coal, natural gas and oil contributing 61.3% of global electricity generation in the year 2020. The cumulative effect of the Stockholm, Rio, and Johannesburg conferences identified sustainable energy development (SED) as a very important factor in the sustainable global development. This study reviews energy transition strategies and proposes a roadmap for sustainable energy transition for sustainable electricity generation and supply in line with commitments of the Paris Agreement aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and limiting the rise in global average temperature to 1.5°C above the preindustrial level. The sustainable transition strategies typically consist of three major technological changes namely, energy savings on the demand side, generation efficiency at production level and fossil fuel substitution by various renewable energy sources and low carbon nuclear. For the transition remain technically and economically feasible and beneficial, policy initiatives are necessary to steer the global electricity transition towards a sustainable energy and electricity system. Large-scale renewable energy adoption should include measures to improve efficiency of existing nonrenewable sources which still have an important cost reduction and stabilization role. A resilient grid with advanced energy storage for storage and absorption of variable renewables should also be part of the transition strategies. From this study, it was noted that whereas sustainable development has social, economic, and environmental pillars, energy sustainability is best analysed by five-dimensional approach consisting of environmental, economic, social, technical, and institutional/political sustainability to determine resource sustainability. The energy transition requires new technology for maximum use of the abundant but intermittent renewable sources a sustainable mix with limited nonrenewable sources optimized to minimize cost and environmental impact but maintained quality, stability, and flexibility of an electricity supply system. Technologies needed for the transition are those that use conventional mitigation, negative emissions technologies which capture and sequester carbon emissions and finally technologies which alter the global atmospheric radiative energy budget to stabilize and reduce global average temperature. A sustainable electricity system needs facilitating technology, policy, strategies and infrastructure like smart grids, and models with an appropriate mix of both renewable and low carbon energy sources.

On integrating large shares of variable renewables into the electricity system

In recent years increasing shares of variable renewable energy sources (RES) have changed the structure of electricity markets in several countries. The core objective of this paper is to provide insights into the conditions necessary to bring about a more democratic and sustainable electricity system by integrating even larger quantities of variable RES. Our major finding is that a market-based approach would ensure that competitive forces rather than governmental interferences – such as capacity mechanisms – shape the future of the electricity markets. This transition towards a competitive and sustainable future electricity system will be based on an approach of “new thinking” which requires a paradigm shift in the whole electricity system. This includes switching to a more flexible and smarter concept allowing a greater scope for demand participation, storage options and other flexibility measures.

Walking the Wall

Retrospective and Prospective Analysis of Policy Incentives For Wind Power in Portugal

Estimates of the magnitude of CO2 emissions reduction brought about by an intervention in the energy system are important because they signal which interventions are the most potent in terms of climate change mitigation. Yet quantifying emissions changes is not trivial because interventions act on the margin of the energy system, rather than acting on all components of the whole energy system equally. Therefore, in order to accurately attribute outcomes to interventions, the specific energy system changes precipitated by the intervention should be estimated, along with the corresponding change in emissions. This paper builds on previous research in this regard estimating short-run marginal emissions factors in national electricity systems. It presents the concept of the long-run marginal emissions factor (LR-MEF), and builds and applies a new electricity system model to study the problem. For the British electricity system it is found that the average LR-MEF is approximately 0.26–0.53kgCO2/kWh for the coming decade, but this reduces to approximately zero by 2035 and onwards as the system decarbonises. Furthermore, it is found that the LR-MEF can diverge very significantly from the short-run. This highlights the state of flux of the British electricity system and the importance of taking structural changes in the electricity system into account when attributing emissions reduction to interventions.

Climate change concerns, resource constraints on conventional energy sources, ever-increasing electricity demand with new loads on the consumer side, improving electricity access, and the new challenge of matching dynamic energy resources with dynamic demand have forced the transitions in electricity systems worldwide. The Indian electricity system is undergoing significant transitions concerning all segments, viz., electricity generation, transmission & distribution, and demand-side to manage such challenges. These transitions throw numerous challenges in technical, economic, social, and policy dimensions. This paper tries to elucidate these transitions and associated challenges in the Indian electricity system. The overall goal of the paper is to present such an understanding of these transitions to introduce appropriate interventions for the effective operation of future electricity systems. The electricity sector has a cardinal role in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. Only a sustainable electricity system can cater to the needs of the people. It can be concluded that the electricity sector's transition is inevitable, and it is eternal.

Multi-objective optimization model for sustainable Indonesian electricity system: Analysis of economic, environment, and adequacy of energy sources

Reinforcement learning in sustainable energy and electric systems: a survey

Increasing amounts of intermittent renewable energy sources (RES) are being integrated into energy systems worldwide. Due to the nature of these sources, they are found to increase the importance of mechanisms for balancing the electricity system. Small-scale combined heat and power (CHP) plants based on gas have proven their ability to participate in the electricity system balancing, and can hence be used to facilitate an integration of intermittent RES into electricity systems. Within the EU electricity system, balancing reserves have to be procured on a market basis. This paper investigates the ability and challenges of a small-scale CHP plant based on natural gas to participate in the German balancing reserve for secondary control. It is found that CHP plants have to account for more potential losses than traditional power plants. However, it is also found that the effect of these losses can be reduced by increasing the flexibility of the CHP unit.

Guest Editorial: Situational awareness of integrated energy systems

In recent years, the response to climate change and the need for sustainable energy have driven the global energy transition towards renewable energy, particularly Solar Power Plants (SPP). As a tropical archipelagic country with abundant solar energy potential, Indonesia is increasingly committed to integrating renewable energy into the national electricity system. However, integrating SPP also has several drawbacks to the electrical system. For instance, there is an absence of inertia in SPP because the SPP does not contain rotating machines, and the intermittency is due to SPP power production being highly dependent on the availability of sun irradiance. This research analyzes the effects of SPP penetration on the existing electrical system. Newton Raphson load flow, three-phase line-to-ground short circuit, and transient disturbance are used to investigate the impact of SPP penetration. The results show that the SPP penetration enhances the voltage steady state profile due to the additional active power from SPP. Furthermore, there are no increasing short circuits due to the characteristic of an inverter with no impedance. In addition, the transient response has an effect as SPP has no inertia. Hence, the system tends to experience swings in conditions.

This Chapter contains the results of our research activities in the line to reduce both: the uncertainties in power forecasting and the lack in power quality for Wind Farms connected to public grids. Our approach is a suite of studies that are focused on power forecasting for Electricity Markets and also an innovative simulation technique to evaluate the quality by using a coupled storage systems as water reservoirs, inertial systems or chemical batteries. The use of renewable energy sources (RES) in electricity generation has many economical and environmental advantages, but has a downside in the instability and unpredictability introduced into the public electric systems. The more important renewable sources, wind and solar power, are mainly related to the weather in a local geographic area. However, the weather is a chaotic system with limited predictability. Many countries follow two trends in the development and planning of their public electric systems; the first is the increase in the generation power from RES and the second one is the transition to open electricity markets. These two trends have a common impact on the public grids, because they both increase the number of agents in the system and the level of uncertainty in the balance between generation and load. The access of more and bigger RES electricity producers can increase the risk of fail and decrease the service quality. That risk can be reduced by increasing the power reserve based on high response gradient systems. These, e.g. diesel or hydraulic, have a high speed of change in their generated power, that is suitable to balance the frequent sudden and unpredictable changes of RES-based electricity production. Therefore, the positive impact of the use of RES on the cost of fuel consumption would have a negative impact on the global cost of electricity systems. The control and planning of public electric systems covers a widespread set of levels, ranging from the hundred millisecond domain associated to the frequency and voltage controlErlich et al. (2006), to the yearly planning domain. Precise regulations for these levels are the concern of the national Electricity Authorities of each country as well as to supranational agencies. The EC Project STORIESPanteri (2008) provides an overview of existing regulations and the respective legislative framework related to RES implementation at a European level. In each national system, the Transmission System Operator(TSO) deals with the management of the electric system in the different control and planning levels. With the increasing penetration Short-Term Advanced Forecasting and Storage-Based Power Quality Regulation in Wind Farms 9

With the development of technology, renewable energy sources (RES) have been developed on islands and electricity systems in isolated areas, including RES which have intermittent characteristics. Those variable renewable energy power plants are operated by integration into existing power systems. The rapid increase of variable RES power plants integration into electricity network has given effect on the development of unit commitment (UC) schemes which aimed to ensure the operation of electric power systems stability, resilience, and with minimum operating cost can be maintained. To achieve these goals, it is necessary to develop optimization methods to be applied to the UC scheme for the island's electricity system.This paper discusses the most suitable optimization methods for the inclusion of renewable energy power generation using a unit commitment scheme in the microgrid electricity system. The methods here are a hybrid technique which combines enhanced priority list method for accurate generation unit scheduling and genetic algorithm (GA) technique for an optimum search for the lowest operational cost. The capacity of generating units to operate per capability segment is also taken into account in operating scheduling and affects the number of iterations in the operation of genetic algorithm techniques. This method has been simulated on the Timor electricity system, which is a growing power system and has an intermittent RES power plant. Implementation in other locations with other variable RES could provide better results. This method is an enrichment of hybrid techniques developed in previous studies. This enrichment is carried out on the calculation by segmenting the ability of generating units.

Will the integration of renewable energy enable sustainable transition of Indian electricity system?