Kies, Alexander and Schyska, Bruno and Bremen, Lueder von (2016) Curtailment in a highly renewable power system and its effect on capacity factors. Energies, 9 (7). p. 510. ISSN 1996-1073

Preview

- Published Version Volltext (16Mb)

Abstract

The capacity factor of a power plant is the ratio of generation over its potential generation. It is an important measure to describe wind and solar resources. However, the fluctuating nature of renewable power generation makes it difficult to integrate all generation at times. Whenever generation exceeds the load, curtailment or storage of energy is required. With increasing renewable shares in the power system, the level of curtailment will further increase. In this work, the influence of the curtailment on the capacity factors for a highly renewable German power system is studied. An effective capacity factor is introduced, and the implications for the distribution of renewable power plants are discussed. Three years of highly-resolved weather data were used to model wind and solar power generation. Together with historical load data and a transmission model, a possible future German power system was simulated. It is shown that effective capacity factors for unlimited transmission are strongly reduced by up to 60% (wind) and 70% (photovoltaics) and therefore of limited value in a highly renewable power system. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that wind power benefits more strongly from a reinforced transmission grid than photovoltaics (PV) does.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Publiziert mit Hilfe des DFG-geförderten Open Access-Publikationsfonds der Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	renewable energy systems; capacity factor; effective capacity factor; energy system modeling; German power system; renewable site assessment
Subjects:	Science and mathematics Science and mathematics > Earth sciences and geology Science and mathematics > Life sciences, biology
Divisions:	Faculty of Mathematics and Science > Institute of Physics (IfP)
Date Deposited:	18 Sep 2017 12:43
Last Modified:	19 Dec 2017 11:44
URI:	https://oops.uni-oldenburg.de/id/eprint/3241
URN:	urn:nbn:de:gbv:715-oops-33226
DOI:	10.3390/en9070510
Nutzungslizenz:

Actions (login required)

View Item