The benefits of cooperation in a highly renewable European electricity network

Abstract

To reach ambitious European CO 2 emission reduction targets, most scenarios of future European electricity systems rely on large shares of wind and solar photovoltaic power generation. We interpolate between two concepts for balancing the variability of these renewable sources: balancing at continental scales using the transmission grid and balancing locally with storage. This interpolation is done by systematically restricting transmission capacities from the optimum level to zero. We run techno-economic cost optimizations for the capacity investment and dispatch of wind, solar, hydroelectricity, natural gas power generation and transmission, as well as storage options such as pumped-hydro, battery, and hydrogen storage. The simulations assume a 95% CO 2 emission reduction compared to 1990, and are run over a full historical year of weather and electricity demand for 30 European countries. In the cost-optimal system with high levels of transmission expansion, energy generation is dominated by wind (65%) and hydro (15%), with average system costs comparable to today's system. Restricting transmission shifts the balance in favour of solar and storage, driving up costs by a third. As the restriction is relaxed, 85% of the cost benefits of the optimal grid expansion can be captured already with only 44% of the transmission volume.

The cost of a future low-carbon electricity system without nuclear power – the case of Sweden

“…This holds for a large range of assumptions on technology costs and possibilities for investment in additional transmission capacity. We contrast our results with the recent study that claims severe cost penalties for not allowing nuclear power in Sweden and discuss the implications of methodology choice.2 for electricity supply [4][5][6]. In the case of Sweden, the government has set a goal of 100% renewable power production for the electricity sector by 2040 [7].…”

“…Similarly, Sepulveda et al [17] concluded that firm lowcarbon resources, such as nuclear power, might reduce the electricity cost by 10%-62% across fully decarbonized cases. Many other studies have analyzed a renewable future electricity system (without nuclear) in Europe and found that the low-carbon electricity system can be achieved with modest cost increase as compared with the current cost [5,6,[18][19][20].In the case of Sweden, several recent publications [21][22][23] have evaluated the economic impact of nuclear power exiting the Swedish electricity system and investigated the potential options to replace nuclear power. Hong et al [21] assessed the cost of phasing out nuclear power in Sweden.…”

More homogeneous wind conditions under strong climate change decrease the potential for inter-state balancing of electricity in Europe

“…However, storage assets are more costly than grid expansion (Schlachtberger et al, 2017;Brown et al, 2016). Since a cost-optimal solution will thus favor grid expansion, we focus on spatial effects and transnational balancing.…”

Principal Mismatch Patterns Across a Simplified Highly Renewable European Electricity Network

“…This modelling approach has produced estimates on the required amount of conventional backup power plants, transmission lines and storage [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][33][34][35][36][37][38]. Also the optimization of levelized system cost of energy has been addressed and has led to new design concepts, such as the optimal heterogeneity and the benefit of cooperation [29,[39][40][41][42].…”