Abstract
Renewable energy sources (RES) will play a crucial role in future sustainable energy systems. In scenarios analyzing future energy system designs, a detailed spatial and temporal representation of renewable-based electricity generation is essential. For this, sufficiently representative weather data are required. Most analyses performed in this context use the historical data of either one specific reference year or an aggregation of multiple years. In contrast, this study analyzes the impact of different weather years based on historical weather data from 1980 through 2016 in accordance with the design of an exemplary future energy system. This exemplary energy system consists of on- and offshore wind energy for power-to-hydrogen via electrolysis, including hydrogen pipeline transport for most southwestern European countries. The assumed hydrogen demand for transportation needs represents a hypothetical future market penetration for fuel cell-electric vehicles of 75%. An optimization framework is used in order to evaluate the resulting system design with the objective function of minimizing the total annual cost (TAC) of the system. For each historical weather year, the applied optimization model determines the required capacities and operation of wind power plants, electrolyzers, storage technologies and hydrogen pipelines to meet the assumed future hydrogen demand in a highly spatially- and temporally-detailed manner, as well as the TAC of the system. Following that, the results of every individual year are compared in terms of installed capacities, overall electricity generation and connection to the transmission network, as well as the cost of these components within each region. The results reveal how sensitive the final design of the exemplary system is to the choice of the weather year. For example, the TAC of the system changes by up to 20% across two consecutive weather years. Furthermore, significant variation in the optimization results regarding installed capacities per region with respect to the choice of weather years can be observed.
Highlights
Carbon dioxide constituted nearly three fourths of global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) in 2017; almost 90% of this gas derived from the combustion of fossil fuels [1]
These model runs differ by the generation time series of wind energy technologies available in the regions, as the time series data are obtained through the simulation of different weather years, ranging from 1980 to 2016
The average full load hours in each region for each year are examined in order to determine whether a low generation or high generation weather year exists within these 37 years
Summary
Carbon dioxide constituted nearly three fourths of global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) in 2017; almost 90% of this gas derived from the combustion of fossil fuels [1]. Variable renewable energy sources (VRES) are environmental friendly, available across the world and rapidly decreasing in cost, their intermittency remains the main obstacle to a VRES-based energy system [3] To address this issue, excess power from VRES, which occurs when power generation is higher than demand, can be transformed into a chemical energy carrier. Considering its high energy density, low storage cost and the fact that it is carbon-free, hydrogen is a promising chemical energy carrier It can be produced by splitting water via electrolyzers, stored in vessels or caverns and, can be utilized in fuel cells to produce electricity in the power sector, in fuel cellelectric vehicles in the transport sector or in heavy industry as a feedstock. They conclude that the utilization of hydrogen in the transportation sector could have a business case, owing to the comparatively high efficiency of fuel cell vehicles
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