Complementarity and ‘Resource Droughts’ of Solar and Wind Energy in Poland: An ERA5-Based Analysis

Abstract

In recent years, Poland has experienced a significant increase in the installed capacity of solar and wind power plants. Renewables are gaining increasing interest not only because of Poland’s obligations to European Union policies, but also because they are becoming cheaper. Wind and solar energy are fairly-well investigated technologies in Poland and new reports are quite frequently added to the existing research works documenting their potential and the issues related to their use. In this article, we analyze the spatial and temporal behavior of solar and wind resources based on reanalysis datasets from ERA5. This reanalysis has been selected because it has appropriate spatial and temporal resolution and fits the field measurements well. The presented analysis focuses only on the availability of energy potential/resources, so characteristics intrinsic to energy conversion (like wind turbine power curve) were not considered. The analysis considered the last 40 years (1980–2019) of available data. The Spearman coefficient of correlation was considered as a complementarity metric, and the Mann–Kendal test was used to assess the statistical significance of trends. The results revealed that: The temporal complementarity between solar and wind resources exists mostly on a seasonal scale and is almost negligible for daily and hourly observations. Moreover, solar and wind resources in joint operation exhibit a smoother availability pattern (assessed based on coefficient of variation). Further findings show that the probability of ‘resource droughts’ (periods when cumulative generation was less than arbitrary threshold) lasting one day is 11.5% for solar resources, 21.3% for wind resources and only 6.2% if both resources are considered in a joint resource evaluation. This situation strongly favors the growth of local hybrid systems, as their combined power output would exhibit lower variability and intermittency, thus decreasing storage demand and/or smoothing power system operation.

A copula-based assessment of renewable energy droughts across Europe

“…In particular, wind and solar power installed capacities have rapidly grown over the past years (EEA (2017), 2017) and they are expected to be important contributors to the European renewable power system. However, their fluctuating nature represents a challenge for renewable energy production as both sources are directly dependent on weather conditions with a high spatio-temporal variability (von Bremen, 2010;Francois, 2016;Jurasz et al, 2021).…”

“…They found a large variability in the energy droughts between renewable sources and the considered European regions, and showed a large decrease in the frequency and duration of the energy droughts with a power system using a mix of energy sources, rather than relying on just renewable generation. Following this approach, Jurasz et al (2021) assessed the complementarity between solar and wind power in Poland, where energy droughts of wind power generation were more frequent than those of solar resources. This study also highlighted that the presence of local hybrid energy production systems (such as solar and wind) would reduce the variability and intermittency of the energy renewable production.…”

Meteorology and climatology of historical weekly wind and solar power resource droughts over western North America in ERA5

“…Research Article resolution that we consider here [19,40,41]. Additionally, we compare our ERA5-derived variables over specific regions where wind and solar generation data was available from the US Energy Information Administration to confirm that the variability of our reanalysis-inferred solar and wind resources is a reasonable representation of the variability of measured generation in those locations (Figs.…”

“…Additionally, correlation within a resource across space or correlation between wind and solar resources, represents a challenge to robust, continuous generation of electricity because a reduction in one resource would typically be associated with a simultaneous reduction in the other [12]. Thus, the ability to transmit electricity over large geographic areas is advantageous not only because it is most economically efficient to site wind and solar farms at relatively remote locations where it is climatologically windiest and sunniest, but also because pooling resources over large areas reduces the correlation between and within resources, making the total energy supply less variable [18][19][20][21][22][23].…”

An Improved Particle Swarm Optimization with Chaotic Inertia Weight and Acceleration Coefficients for Optimal Extraction of PV Models Parameters

“…Subsequently, renewable energy sources such as solar, tidal, wind, and biomass provide clean, safe, and abundant energy for utilization. The second most abundant renewable energy source after the wind is solar energy [4], which is utilized in many areas of life such as irrigation [5], solar farming [6], electric vehicles [7], and street lighting [8]. A photovoltaic (PV) system is required to convert solar energy into a useful source of energy (electricity) [9].…”