Wind Turbine Integration - Can Current Allocation Policies Curb Transmission Grid Congestions Caused by Renewables Feed-In?

Abstract

In Germany, political decisions drive the allocation of wind turbines together with investment decisions, social rejections, land use planning, regional development and ecological aspects. The past few years show that the development of renewables is faster than the grid expansion, leading to congestions in the transmission grid. Expensive redispatch measures resolve congestions but the high costs have become a subject of intense economic and political discussions. A main cause is that sites with high wind yield and load centers fall apart geographically, leading to changes in the transmission grid load flows. In order to prevent a further escalation of the problem, regulatory policies try to shift the allocation of wind turbines until the transmission grid development has caught up. However, the exact design of regulatory instruments and their technical suitability to solve the problem are unclear. The question arises whether policies addressing wind turbine allocation are suited to curb future transmission grid congestions and how they should be designed. This applies especially to the so-called grid expansion area, a regulatory scheme currently in place. In this paper, we use a toolchain of an allocation model for wind turbines which can take current or newly developed regulatory instruments into account, a market simulation and redispatch simulation for the transmission grid. Results are - amongst others - redispatch volume and costs. Based on those results for different scenarios with and without regulatory instruments, an indication of the suitability and design of those instruments is possible.