Renewable Energy Sources In Europe Research Articles

TOWARDS THE FIRST OFFSHORE WIND ENERGY PLANT

Offshore wind energy is one of the fastest growing sectors of renewable energy sources in Europe. In Poland, offshore wind energy is one of the most socially acceptable electricity generation technology. Even though Poland has a very favourable wind conditions for the development of both inland and offshore wind energy investments, there’s still no offshore wind energy plant. The investment processes are still ongoing. One of the reasons underlying this is the lack of proper maritime spatial planning. Apart from that, there are several additional complicated regulations on the building permits, that the investor must obtain before the construction works may be started.

Allowing Large Penetration of Concentrated RES in Europe and North Africa via a Hybrid HVAC-HVDC Grid

Renewable energy sources (RESs) and electricity demand are not evenly distributed geographically across Europe. Thus, harvesting the wind energy from the north and solar energy from the south and delivering them to the demand in central Europe is a more viable solution. However, the present High-voltage alternating current (HVAC) transmission grids have been sometimes congested; thus, High-voltage direct current (HVDC) provides another possibility along the existing HVAC infrastructure. In this paper, we propose a hybrid HVAC-HVDC grid, allowing a large penetration of concentrated RES in Europe and North Africa. More specifically, the HVDC network is constructed to transfer wind and hydro electricity from northwestern Europe and solar electricity from north Africa, while the HVAC network is used to distribute electricity within each country or among adjacent areas. To quantitatively evaluate the feasibility and relevant performances, multiple dimensions of indicators are designed. Employing several European energy scenarios up to 2050, the performances of the proposed HVAC-HVDC infrastructure are analyzed and compared. The calculation results show that compared with the pure HVAC grid, the integrated HVAC-HVDC grid can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and pollutants, leading to a further reduction in the number of deaths from air pollution. In addition, the HVAC-HVDC grids can accommodate a higher penetration of RES without causing infeasible power flows.

Integration of electric vehicles into transmission grids: A case study on generation adequacy in Europe in 2040

Electric vehicles (EVs) are expected to grow massively in the coming years, and grid integration of a large number of them could challenge electricity-system infrastructure. This paper aims at describing a methodology to study the technical and economic impacts on power systems of mass EV charging for several EV-owner connection behavior profiles (systematic, when necessary, when convenient) and the range of recharge modes available (uncontrolled, time-of-use tariff, smart unidirectional charging, and vehicle-to-grid). This framework is applied to a case study at hourly resolution of high penetration of electric vehicles and renewable energy sources in Europe at the 2040 time-horizon, in line with the ‘National Trends Scenario’ grid mix under the pan-EU ENTSO-E Ten-Year Network Development Plan. Results show that the European electricity system can accommodate large EV growth and that widespread adoption of smart charging in France can significantly reduce operational electricity system costs by up to 1.1 G€ and reduce carbon emissions by up to 3.2 MtCO2 per year. Multiple EV smart charging modes are also compared and the parameters have the largest impact on EV flexibility are identified, including gas prices, smart charging adoption, weekly flexibility, and mid-day charging.

Perceptions of GHG emissions and renewable energy sources in Europe, Australia and the USA.

People’s sentiments and perceptions of greenhouse gas emission and renewable energy are important information to understand their reaction to the planned mitigation policy. Therefore, this research analyzes people’s perceptions of greenhouse gas emissions and their preferences for renewable energy resources using a sample of Twitter data. We first identify themes of discussion using semantic text similarity and network analysis. Next, we measure people’s interest in renewable energy resources based on the mentioned rate in Twitter and search interest in Google trends. Then, we measure people’s sentiment toward these resources and compare the interest with sentiments to identify opportunities for policy improvement. The results indicate a minor influence of governmental assemblies on Twitter discourses compared to a very high influence of two renewable energy providers amounts to more than 40% of the tweeting activities related to renewable energy. The search interest analysis shows a slight shift in people’s interest in favor of renewable energy. The interest in geothermal energy is decreasing while interest in biomass energy is increasing. The sentiment analysis shows that biomass energy has the highest positive sentiments while solar and wind energy have higher interest. Solar and wind energy are found to be the two most promising sources for the future energy transition. Our study implies that governments should practice a higher influence on promoting awareness of the environment and converging between people’s interests and feasible energy solutions. We also advocate Twitter as a source for collecting real-time data about social preferences for environmental policy input.

Electric vehicle charging strategy to support renewable energy sources in Europe 2050 low-carbon scenario

The EU has undertaken a thorough reform of its energy model. Current EU 2050 climate commitment sets an 80–95% GHG reduction goal. To reach this goal, the EU must make continued progress towards a low-carbon society. Renewable energy sources and electric vehicle play an important role for a gradual transition. The power grid faces a challenging future due to intermittency and the non-dispatchable nature of wind and solar energy production, but flexibility needs can migrate from generation to load, with the expansion of demand-side resources and storage technologies. A novel grid technique is presented and evaluated in this paper for the optimal integrated operation of renewable resources and electric vehicle to increase penetration of renewable energy. It is proposed a distribute control system to manage a charge and discharge strategy to support mismatching between load and renewable generation thru V2G technology. Demand response, peak saving and ancillary services are introduced to keep a reliable power quality, stable frequency and flatten load profile.

Evaluating Land Eligibility Constraints of Renewable Energy Sources in Europe

The amount and distribution of land which is eligible for renewable energy sources (RES) is fundamental to the role these technologies will play in future energy systems. Unfortunately, land eligibility (LE) investigations in the literature are plagued by many inconsistencies between studies, impeding the work of researchers and policy makers interested in energy system development planning. As one factor contributing to this, the criteria used to construct land exclusion constraints have not been the focus of scientific investigation on a large scale, and as such their interactions are not well known.Therefore, an open source LE framework was used to perform evaluations in the European context of 36 commonly used constraints. After direct visualization, three measures by which these constraints are valuable to an LE analysis were computed: independence, exclusivity, and overlap. Results show extensive spatial sensitivity to constrain influence. Furthermore, some constraints, such as proximity to agriculture and woodland areas, rank high in all three measures; others, such as distance from airports and camping sites, consistently rank low; and still others, such as elevation, score highly in one measure but not the others. With these results, LE researchers can better understand the contributions of the constraints used in their analyses.

Approach for a Potential Analysis of Energy Flexible Production Systems

Due to the increasing use of volatile renewable energy sources in Europe and especially in Germany, companies’ production systems have to be energy flexible in order to cope with changes in energy markets. Therefore, an important requirement for companies is to know about the possibilities of their production systems to adapt load. Hence, several key performance indicators for evaluating production systems have to be developed. This work provides an approach for the evaluation of energy flexibility based on the availability of different machine states in terms of different energy levels. Furthermore, several time dimensions of energy flexibility are taken into consideration. The approach is structured into five different steps. The first step describes the identification of measures for adapting the load of a station to the current energy supply. In order to evaluate the potential of a production system, it is necessary to analyze the combination of different measures of different stations – so called bundle of measures. Therefore, the second step provides a strategy for the enhancement of load adaption by bundling at least two measures. Beside this, it is also possible to improve the temporal characteristics of measures resulting from technical and organizational restrictions by using another bundling-strategy, as described in the third step. The fourth step describes a strategy to reduce the effects caused by interactions between the stations that come along with the execution of measures. The last step describes the evaluation of the bundles with different key performance indicators.

Sprach- und kommunikationswissenschaftliche Analysen zu Energiekonzepten in Europa um 2014

The article is concentrated on the topics of linguistic and communicational analysis of near future energies among concepts of renewable energy sources in Europe 2014 based on visions according to Project Europe 2030. The analysis will be realized on the basis of text corpus of ZEIT.ONLINE and proved by the socio-empiric method SYMLOG as linguistic and communication research tool for systemic multilevel observation of groups dealing with the discourse of new energies. The article will show the various ways and debates within new linguistic and communicational analysis of the energy sources in the EU in general and as comparison between single EU states including Germany and Poland.

Integration of Electricity from Renewable Energy Sources — The Czech Story

Integration of electricity from renewable energy sources is currently a big issue that affects all areas of the power industry (generation – transmission – distribution –consumption) and it relates to all highly developed as well as developing power industry systems. There has recently been a significant increase of installed capacity of renewable energy sources, especially of photovoltaic power plants in the Czech Republic. High levels of electricity generation from renewable energy sources occur during favorable weather conditions in the Central Europe region. This causes loop flows and overloading of transmission systems in the whole region. Huge development of renewable energy sources in the region considerably affects both the distribution system and the transmission system of the Czech Republic. Operation of the Czech power system is negatively influenced and project development of the power system needs to be repeatedly modified and updated. Steeply raising development of subsidized renewable energy sources in Europe and in the Czech Republic brings about many challenges and risks, technical as well as economic and social.

The Spanish intraday market design: A successful solution to balance renewable generation?

The increasing penetration of renewable energy sources in Europe requires market mechanisms which allow an efficient balancing of these sources. This paper analyzes the participation of renewable generators in the Spanish intraday market. First, the organization of the intraday market and the short-term market mechanisms influencing intraday trading are described. After that, day-ahead and intraday market prices, as well as intraday trading volumes, are used to study the behavior of market agents in the Spanish intraday market. Regarding renewable generators, the influence of support schemes on the behavior of these agents in the intraday market is also analyzed. This paper shows that the Spanish intraday market has effectively contributed to renewable generation balancing. Despite this, market distortions have incentivized some renewable generators to arbitrate between the day-ahead and intraday markets, giving rise to higher system costs. Based on the presented analysis, it is argued that these distortions need to be removed from short-term markets to incentivize market parties, especially intermittent generators, to reduce forecast errors over time, improving economic efficiency and avoiding the use of costly balancing actions performed by the System Operator.

How to cope with changing demand conditions — The Swedish forest sector as a case study: an analysis of major drivers of change in the use of wood resources

Promotion of renewable energy sources in Europe is foreseen to result in a dramatic increase in the demand for woody biomass. This paper assesses whether wood resources in the European Union (EU) will support future demand. Possible implications for countries with ample forest resources and a well-developed forest industry, such as Sweden, of an expected mounting demand pressure are discussed. Other drivers of change in global wood product markets posing challenges for the forest sector in general are also addressed. These drivers are reviewed and, together with the results from the EUwood project and econometric wood market models, analyzed as to their impacts on the Swedish forest sector. Demand is foreseen to vastly exceed the potential supply of woody biomass in Europe, putting a tremendous pressure on the Swedish forest resource and necessitating trade-offs between different ecosystem services. Further, projections suggest that Sweden will decrease in importance in production as well as consumption terms for all wood products.

Did Feed-In Tariffs Work?: An Econometric Assessment

Feed-in tariffs are the most popular policy tool to support electricity from renewable energy sources in Europe. I introduce a simple investment decision model to explain how different policy design features influence the incentive to invest in renewable energy systems. The theoretical tool captures tariff amount, contract duration, electricity price, system lifetime, price uncertainty, generation cost, discount rate, and an alternative investment option. In a fixed effects model, I regress technology-specific generation on the resulting covariate. Using a sample of 26 EU member countries between 1990 and 2010, I find that FIT policies have effectively supported biomass, geothermal, and solar photovoltaic electricity generation. However, there is no such link between FIT policies and onshore wind generation. I show that alternative measures of FIT policies, such as binary and nominal variables, can yield misleading results. The paper provides country-specific recommendations for policymakers on how to increase the overall effectiveness of their existing feed-in tariffs.

MOSES – A modelling tool for the analysis of scenarios of the European electricity supply system

Recent studies have shown that a transition of the current power supply system in Europe to a system almost entirely based on fluctuating Renewable Energy Sources (RES) by mid-century is possible. However, most of these scenarios require a significant amount of back-up power capacities to ensure the security of electricity supply. This would imply high additional investments and operating costs. Hence, alternative options should be investigated first. Here we present a first outlook of our simulation model MOSES which will be able to analyse different target states of the European electricity system in 2050. In this model long-term meteorological data series are used to optimise the capacity mix of RES in Europe. One of the main elements of our tool is a simplified electricity network. In addition, alternative options for reduction of additional back-up power like the expansion of the transmission grid, the use of demand-side management and/or the installation of over-capacities will be implemented. The results will be used to provide scientifically proven recommendations to policy makers for a reliable energy supply system in Europe based on Renewable Energy Sources.

Perspectives on the Potential Contribution of Swedish Forests to Renewable Energy Targets in Europe

Forest biomass is an important energy source in Sweden and some other European countries. In this paper we estimate the physically available (i.e., total potential) forest biomass for energy from annual forest harvesting (1970–2008) or in the total standing stock (2008) in Sweden. To place Sweden’s forest resources into perspective we relate this to an estimated need for renewable energy sources in Europe. As Swedish forests supply a range of goods and ecosystem services, and as forest biomass is often bulky and expensive to procure, we also discuss issues that affect the amount of forest biomass that is actually available for energy production. We conclude that forests will contribute to Sweden’s renewable energy potential, but to a limited extent and expectations must be realistic and take techno-economical and environmental issues into consideration. To meet future energy needs in Sweden and Europe, a full suite of renewable energy resources will be needed, along with efficient conversion systems. A long-term sustainable supply of forest resources for energy and other uses can be obtained if future harvest levels are increased until they are equal to the annual growth increment. Delivering more than this would require increasing forest productivity through more intensive management. The new management regimes would have to begin now because it takes a long time to change annual production in temperate and boreal forests.

Comparative analysis of different supporting measures for the production of electrical energy by solar PV and Wind systems: Four representative European cases

In the 9th of March 2007, the European Council decided a fixing goal of 20% contribution of the renewable energy sources (RES) on the total European electric energy production in 2020. In order to reach such an ambitious goal, all the European countries are adopting different support policies for encouraging the installations of RES-based generation systems. In this paper, after a brief review on the main support policies for RES in Europe, the specific situations of four representative countries (France, Germany, Italy and Spain) are examined, with the purpose of putting into evidence the main differences in the support policies adopted for Photovoltaic (PV) and Wind systems. In particular, a comparison based on the calculation of the pay-back-period (PBP), the net present value (NPV) and the internal rate of return (IRR), for different sized PV and Wind systems, shows that in some situations a support policy can be not convenient for the owner of the RES-based generation system and that, in many cases, the differences between the way of implementation of the same support policy in different countries, can give place to significantly different results.

Particle swarm optimization for biomass-fuelled systems with technical constraints

This paper introduces a binary particle swarm optimization-based method to accomplish optimal location of biomass-fuelled systems for distributed power generation. The approach also provides the supply area for the biomass plant and takes technical constraints into account. This issue can be formulated as a nonlinear optimization problem. In rural or radial distribution networks the main technical constraint is the impact on the voltage profile. Biomass is one of the most promising renewable energy sources in Europe, but more research is required to prove that power generation from biomass is both technically and economically viable. Forest residues are here considered as biomass source, and the fitness function to be optimized is the profitability index. A fair comparison between the proposed algorithm and genetic algorithms (GAs) is performed. For such goal, convergence curves of the average profitability index versus number of iterations are computed. The proposed algorithm reaches a better solution than GAs when considering similar computational cost (similar number of evaluations).

Les énergies renouvelables. État de l'art et perspectives de développement

Abstract Here are presented the renewable energies composed of all energy sources deriving directly or indirectly from the sun, including solar, wind and hydraulic energies as well as the energies available from bioconversion. These energies are characterised by the fact that they are inexhaustible but available only in limited quantities at a given place and time. They have only a very slight impact on the environment. The development of renewable energy sources in Europe will receive a strong stimulus in the coming decade by the adoption of a European directive on electricity from renewable sources, designed to foster compliance with the European commitments made in Kyoto. In France, the goal is to increase the portion of electrical energy from renewable sources from 15 to 21% by 2010.