Compounding climate change impacts during high stress periods for a high wind and solar power system in Texas

Abstract

Power system planning aims at ensuring that sufficient supply-and demand-side assets exist to meet electricity demand at all times. For a Texas electric power system with high wind and solar penetrations, we quantify how climate change will affect supply and demand during three types of high stress periods for the power grid: high demand hours, high net demand hours, and high system ramp hours. We specifically quantify effects on demand, reductions in available thermal capacity (i.e. thermal deratings), wind and solar generation, and net demand. We estimate each using meteorological variables from five climate change projections (2041-2050) assuming Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 and from a reference period (1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005). All five projections indicate that climate change will increase demand by up to 2 GWh during high demand hours (4% of demand in the reference period) and increase net demand by up to 3 GWh during high net demand periods (6% of net demand in the reference period). All five projections also indicate thermal deratings will increase during high demand and net demand periods by up to 2 GWh and high net demand ramps will increase by up to 2 GW. Overall, our results indicate compounding effects of climate change in Texas will necessitate greater investment in peak and flexible capacity. RECEIVED

The Effects of Climate Change on Interregional Electricity Market Dynamics on the U.S. West Coast

“…Given the current exposure of power systems to hydrometeorological uncertainty and extremes, there is growing concern about the future impacts of climate change on power system operations (Bartos & Chester, 2015; Förster & Lilliestam, 2010; Hamlet et al., 2010; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2017; Turner, Hejazi, et al., 2017; Turner, Ng, & Galelli, 2017; Turner et al., 2019; Voisin et al., 2020; Zamuda et al., 2018). Previous investigations have focused on the potential impacts of climate change on streamflow dynamics and the timing and amount of hydropower production available globally (Hamududu & Killingtveit, 2012; Turner, Hejazi, et al., 2017; Turner, Ng, & Galelli, 2017) and over specific regions (Bartos & Chester, 2015; Craig et al., 2020; Ganguli et al., 2017; Hamlet et al., 2010; Kao et al., 2015; Kern & Characklis, 2017; Kopytkovskiy et al., 2015; Totschnig et al., 2017; Van Vliet, Sheffield, et al., 2016; Van Vliet, Wiberg, et al., 2016; Voisin et al., 2020) Several studies have also investigated the impacts of higher air temperatures and altered streamflow dynamics on cooling water resources and the useable capacity of thermal power plants (Förster & Lilliestam, 2010; Koch & Vögele, 2009; Miara et al., 2018; Pechan & Eisenack, 2014; Van Vliet, Sheffield, et al., 2016; Van Vliet, Wiberg, et al., 2016; Voisin et al., 2020); and many other studies have examined the potential impacts of a warming climate on electricity demand (Auffhammer et al., 2017; Dirks et al., 2015; McFarland et al., 2015; Perera et al., 2020; Ralston Fonseca et al., 2019; Van Ruijven et al., 2019), generally finding that average summer cooling demand will increase while winter heating demand decreases.…”

Cap. 5. Abastecimiento, suministro y demanda de energía. En: La Quinta Evaluación Nacional del Clima

“…El cambio climático plantea peligros agudos y crónicos para el sistema energético y las comunidades, originados por tendencias coincidentes o secuenciales y eventos extremos (Figura 5.3; Capítulo 18). Las proyecciones climáticas para 2041-2050 muestran un aumento de la demanda eléctrica en Texas al mismo tiempo que puede disminuir el suministro, debido en parte a posibles disminuciones de recursos renovables como el viento, así como a reducciones de la producción energética de las centrales termoeléctricas debido a temperaturas ambiente más cálidas 173 . Los eventos secuenciales pueden agravar los impactos si la recuperación no se ha producido antes del siguiente evento o peligro 174,175 .…”

“…ej., los incendios forestales pueden ir seguidos de inundaciones 181 y múltiples huracanes pueden afectar una misma localidad costera 157 . Las proyecciones climáticas muestran que el aumento de la demanda y la disminución de la oferta de electricidad coincidirán en las regiones durante las olas de calor 173 en Texas, por ejemplo, han ayudado a avanzar investigaciones para comprender las relaciones entre la red eléctrica, el suministro de combustible y la infraestructura, y el diseño y la fijación de precios del mercado, así como la forma en que los seres humanos responden a los eventos extremos en tiempo real y cómo las comunidades sobrecargadas se ven desproporcionadamente impactadas 157 . Se trata de sistemas complejos y dinámicos.…”

Convection‐permitting modeling with regional climate models: Latest developments and next steps

“…CPRCMs were used in different studies to evaluate the solar energy resources and identify regions that have a greater photovoltaic potential over the contiguous U.S. (James et al, 2017), Kuwait (Gueymard & Jiménez, 2018), the Arabian Peninsula (Dasari et al, 2019), southeastern Australia (Prasad & Kay, 2020), and Lesotho (D'Isidoro et al, 2020). Moreover, CPRCM projections were performed to assess the impacts of climate change on the solar resources (Carreño et al, 2020) that would consequently affect power system operations (Craig et al, 2019) and high energy stress periods in a region (Texas) with high wind and solar penetrations (Craig et al, 2020). Finally, Chen et al (2021) highlighted the conflicting surface solar radiation projections over the United States from GCMs, RCMs, and CPRCMs that are likely associated with the transient aerosol scenarios used in certain models.…”