The UK has some of the worst performing residential buildings in the EU from an energy efficiency perspective. Natural gas remains a dominant feature of existing and new-build housing with strong historical, technical, and social barriers to change. Consequently, the residential sector is responsible for significant shares of national emissions and has a strong role to play under ambitious net zero targets.To assess this role, this work combines long-term system-wide optimisation modelling with heat and electricity network models of representative residential locations. The scenario framework investigates key heating alternatives across futures with dwindling carbon budgets but lower restrictions on residential investment options. Comparing frameworks offers insights into "real life" applicability of technology solutions consistent with system-wide decarbonisation pathways to 2050.Residential sector heat plays an increasing role in lowering emissions as targets tighten. Moving away from natural gas becomes unavoidable and long-term trajectories combine end-use electrification, at household or collective levels, with supply-side decarbonisation. This is preferable to alternative gases that continue to carry uncertain emission impacts, but requires significant local network reinforcement. This could be deferred where technically difficult using near-term hybrid approaches. Enabling this transition will rely on policies that support open and varied technology portfolios.
The European Single Market aims to promote trade and competition in electricity generation across the EU, with investment signals for new generation capacity and interconnection coming from zonal electricity prices reflecting scarcity value. However, a growing number of EU Member States have implemented national Capacity Mechanisms in order to ensure future security of supply within their own borders, which may distort the cross-border trade of energy. This local view of energy security is in response to internal technical and economic constraints and a perceived inability of cross-border electricity flows to be a reliable source of capacity at times of maximum stress, in favour of self-sufficiency. A number of routes are available to resolve this conflict through permitting cross-border participation of generators in local Capacity Mechanisms, but this requires resolution of a number of complicating factors, not least a means for properly allocating transmission capacity without introducing further distortions to the energy market. Alternative solutions could be enacted at an EU-level, such as through the alignment of Capacity Mechanisms to a common model, or the introduction of an EU-wide single Capacity Mechanism, but the current regulatory focus appears to remain on resolution of such issues at a national level.
During high wind speed shutdown (HWSS) events, the power outputs of wind power plants may be subject to high ramp rates, causing issues for the System Operator (SO) in predicting total wind output, allocating adequate reserve levels and minimising balancing costs. As the timing of these events is difficult to predict, it is proposed that individual turbines may be used as probabilistic early warning indicators of HWSS events across sites, and by extension to a wide geographical area. The shut-down history of two separate wind farms across Scotland is analysed to determine the likelihood and impact of such events. It is shown that in most cases, HWSS does not result in the full loss of availability. Factors such as turbine elevation and mean wind exposure are key indicators of the order of shut-down across a site. The suggestion that sites could be used as early warning indicators for the pattern of HWSS across a transmission zone is difficult to characterise and for the two wind farms studied, prediction was not consistent
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