Abstract
The Krasnodar Territory is considered one of most attractive regions in Russia in terms of its climatic characteristics for the development of renewable energy sources. According to the current plans of Russian Ministry of Energy, the cumulative capacity of wind generating facilities in the Krasnodar Territory will reach 405 MW by 2022. It is well known form the literature, the average installed capacity utilization factor of wind turbines currently is about 30%. Comparatively low installed capacity utilization factor of wind parks significantly increases their payback period, thereby reducing commercial attractiveness. However, from an environmental point of view, low installed capacity utilization factor of wind plant can also be a problem: this means that most of the energy and materials spent on the manufacturing of an energy object do not produce a useful output, in other words, wasted. Therefore, a promising way to increase the installed capacity utilization factor of wind and solar plants is the use of energy storage systems. But the production and disposal of chemical energy storage systems is also associated with significant negative environmental effects, therefore, in the case of their large-scale application it is necessary to correctly assess the environmental consequences of this method of increasing the installed capacity utilization factor of wind plants. In this study we evaluate on the basis of the LCA methodology two possible alternatives: (i) the use of wind parks without energy storage systems, and (ii) the production of energy storage systems necessary for the accumulation of electricity produced by wind parks in the Krasnodar Territory, which cannot be supplied to the power system and, hence, is thrown away.Keywords: wind energy, LCA, regional energy system, energy storage, strategic planningJEL Classifications: O33, Q42, Q47, Q48DOI: https://doi.org/10.32479/ijeep.8791
Highlights
The creation and successful operation of a system of state support for renewable energy in Russia on the basis of capacity supply agreements has led to the fact that an increasing number of Russian regions include the construction of solar and wind power plants in their strategies of economic development (Kozlova and Collan, 2016; Ratner and Nizhegorodtsev, 2017; Smeets, 2017)
We set ourselves the following research task: to evaluate, on the basis of the LCA methodology, and compare the environmental effects of two possible alternatives: (1) the use of wind parks without energy storage systems, and (2) the production of energy storage systems necessary for the accumulation of electricity produced by wind parks in the Krasnodar Territory and the Republic of Adygea, which cannot be supplied to the power system and, is thrown away
Our study showed that currently available energy storage technologies provide clearly pronounced advantages in organizing a regional energy system as compared to dumping excess energy generated by renewable energy facilities only in terms of greenhouse gas emissions
Summary
The creation and successful operation of a system of state support for renewable energy in Russia on the basis of capacity supply agreements has led to the fact that an increasing number of Russian regions include the construction of solar and wind power plants in their strategies of economic development (Kozlova and Collan, 2016; Ratner and Nizhegorodtsev, 2017; Smeets, 2017). The issues of environmental efficiency in this case, as a rule, are not considered, since it is believed that the use of renewable energy sources (RES) in itself automatically leads to an improvement in the environmental situation Nowadays the approach to the analysis of promising areas of development of energy systems taking into account the assessment of the full product life cycle (LCA) including upstream activities has become extremely popular both in academic and business analytic literature. According to this approach generated electricity is understood as a product, and the best technology for its generation can be chosen. Paletto et al study environmental effects of biomass power plants with LCA methodology (Paletto et al, 2019)
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