The influence of weather regimes on European renewable energy production and demand

Karin Van Der Wiel,Frank M Selten,James A Screen,Robert W Lee,Hannah C Bloomfield,Laurens P Stoop,Russell Blackport

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/ab38d3

Abstract

The growing share of variable renewable energy increases the meteorological sensitivity of power systems. This study investigates if large-scale weather regimes capture the influence of meteorological variability on the European energy sector. For each weather regime, the associated changes to wintertime—mean and extreme—wind and solar power production, temperature-driven energy demand and energy shortfall (residual load) are explored. Days with a blocked circulation pattern, i.e. the ‘Scandinavian Blocking’ and ‘North Atlantic Oscillation negative’ regimes, on average have lower than normal renewable power production, higher than normal energy demand and therefore, higher than normal energy shortfall. These average effects hide large variability of energy parameters within each weather regime. Though the risk of extreme high energy shortfall events increases in the two blocked regimes (by a factor of 1.5 and 2.0, respectively), it is shown that such events occur in all regimes. Extreme high energy shortfall events are the result of rare circulation types and smaller-scale features, rather than extreme magnitudes of common large-scale circulation types. In fact, these events resemble each other more strongly than their respective weather regime mean pattern. For (sub-)seasonal forecasting applications weather regimes may be of use for the energy sector. At shorter lead times or for more detailed system analyses, their ineffectiveness at characterising extreme events limits their potential.

Highlights

To mitigate future climate change an energy transition to low or zero-carbon energy sources is required (e.g. Matthews et al 2009, Meinshausen et al 2009)
Energy related variability within weather regimes For the investigation of variability within a weather regime, we reduce the spatial wind and solar power potential data to European totals, which results in time series for wind and solar power production, energy demand and energy shortfall
Meteorology of extreme high energy shortfall events We investigate the meteorological conditions that cause the extreme high energy shortfall events (figure 4(i)) in more detail, and compare these to the typical patterns associated with the weather regimes

Summary

Introduction

To mitigate future climate change an energy transition to low or zero-carbon energy sources is required (e.g. Matthews et al 2009, Meinshausen et al 2009). For this reason, in many places the share of renewable wind and solar power generation of total power generation is increasing. It is paramount to consider the spatial and temporal variations in energy production and energy demand in the design and operation of future power systems with a high share of renewable sources (Armaroli and Balzani 2011, Zeyringer et al 2018). E.g. the ability to meet peak demand, taking into account the full range of meteorological variability and power system characteristics are essential to identify, and design for, critical events (Armaroli and Balzani 2011)

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