Contribution of bulk energy storage to integrating variable renewable energies in future European electricity systems

Abstract

Remarkably higher expected shares of variable renewable energy sources for electricity generation (RES‐Electricity) than those available today will be a great challenge for the European power system. Bulk electricity storage technologies—that is, pumped hydro energy storage—are considered a key component while facing these future challenges. The conducted analysis is based on the modeling results of the Blue storyline of the SUSPLAN project that is characterized by a high growth of RES‐Electricity deployment. The RES‐Electricity deployment results on a country level for the years 2030 and 2050, the age structure of the existing thermal power plant portfolio, and hourly values of electricity demand and RES‐Electricity generation are taken as input for a linear optimization algorithm, which is implemented to analyse the importance of bulk electricity storage technologies for integrating large amounts of variable RES‐Electricity in European regions. Two regions are analysed in detail: Central Western Europe and the Iberian Peninsula. The results show that due to the age‐related phase out of thermal power plants in the future, additional new power plant capacities will be needed in many European regions by the year 2030. Only some European regions also have sufficient flexible generation capacity available to cover the residual load in the long term. Furthermore, RES‐Electricity feed‐in will exceed electricity demand for some time during the year 2050 in several regions. The Iberian Peninsula shows especially high RES‐Electricity feed‐in exceeding electricity demand about half the time during the year 2050. This surplus RES‐Electricity generation can be used for bulk electricity storage and/or for exports to neighboring European regions. WIREs Energy Environ 2016, 5:451–469. doi: 10.1002/wene.195This article is categorized under: Energy Infrastructure > Systems and Infrastructure Energy Systems Economics > Systems and Infrastructure Energy and Development > Systems and Infrastructure