Coupling Variable Renewable Electricity Production to the Heating Sector through Curtailment and Power-to-heat Strategies for Accelerated Emission Reduction

Abstract

The Paris Climate Accord and recent IPCC analysis urges to strive towards carbon neutrality by the middle of this century. As most of the end-use energy in Europe is for heating, or well above 60%, these targets will stress more actions in the heating sector. So far, much of the focus in the emission reduction has been on the electricity sector. For instance, the European Union has set as goal to have a carbon-free power system by 2050. Therefore, the efficient coupling of renewable energy integration to heat and heating will be part of an optimal clean energy transition. This paper applies optimization-based energy system models on national (Finland) and sub-national level (Helsinki) to include the heating sector in an energy transition. The models are based on transient simulation of the energy system, coupling variable renewable energies (VRE) through curtailment and power-to-heat schemes to the heat production system. We used large-scale wind power schemes as VRE in both cases. The results indicate that due to different energy system limitations and boundary conditions, stronger curtailment strategies accompanied with large heat pump schemes would be necessary to bring a major impact in the heating sector through wind power. On a national level, wind-derived heat could meet up to 40% of the annual heat demand. On a city level, the use of fossil fuel in combined heat and power production (CHP), typical for northern climates, could significantly be reduced leading even close to 70% CO 2 emission reductions in Helsinki. Though these results were site specific, they indicate major opportunities for VRE in sectoral coupling to heat production and hence also a potential role in reducing the emissions.

Evaluating Spatial Interdependencies of Sector Coupling Using Spatiotemporal Modelling

“…Specifically, registered battery electric cars in Europe increased from 734 in 2010 to 341,267 in 2019 [51]. Additionally, the utilisation of electricity for heating and cooling (e.g., [52,53]), Power-to-Gas (e.g., [54]) or simply power-to-X are options for exploiting surplus electricity from RES.…”

Optimizing Power and Heat Sector Coupling for the Implementation of Carbon-Free Communities

“…This points to a massive energy transition ahead, including long-term planning of generation expansion and storage capacity. This clean energy transition not only includes the electrical power sector but also necessitates more actions in the district heating (DH) sector, as most of the end-use energy in Europe is in the form of heating [1]. For instance, heating and domestic hot water, together, constitute over 80% of the households' end-use energy in Finland [2].…”

Pathway Analysis of a Zero-Emission Transition in the Nordic-Baltic Region

“…Such a "whole-picture" view enables stronger coupling of markets across the sub-regions and sectors. Sector coupling is actually an enabler to a much higher use of variable renewable electricity such as wind power in the energy system because of increased energy system flexibility [21,22]. This is mainly because surplus electricity can easily be used in other sectors such as heating or transport, which further helps with the decarbonization quest.…”

“…This is mainly because surplus electricity can easily be used in other sectors such as heating or transport, which further helps with the decarbonization quest. In particular, a power-to-heat (P2H) [21][22][23][24] strategy would be important in the northern context, as most of the final energy use is in the form of heating because of the cold climate.…”