A study into the effects of climate change on electricity systems by scientists at Aarhus University in Denmark has delivered some good news in a backdrop of ever more alarming stories about climate change.
The research, published in the energy research journal Joule, found that sea levels and temperatures may rise but well-planned wind and solar energy systems will continue to work equally well in future European climates.
The team used data from weather models and climate time series and developed models that could predict solar panel and wind turbine output for all countries in Europe under all common global warming scenarios right through to 2100.
The scientists chose five key metrics with with to compare the ways in which a European weather-dependent electrical grid would function in different projections:
- Need and capacity for dispatchable electricity (which can be stored and used on demand by power grid operators),
- Benefit of electrical transmission,
- Benefit of electrical storage,
- Variability of electricity production,
- Consumption.
These five metrics measure the most important elements of large-scale renewable energy systems and are abstract enough to draw general conclusions from.
Energy study abstract
This graphical abstract shows how researchers used different projections of climatic outcomes over the 21st century to assess how important key metrics of a highly renewable electricity system might be affected by climate change. Credit: Kozarcanin et al./Joule
"Most other energy system studies assume a number of technologies and seek to combine them in a cost-optimal way to cover the demand," says Smail Kozarcanin, a PhD fellow in the Department of Engineering and the first author of the study. "In this study, we seek to understand, for example, how climate change affects the system independent of which technologies are used to cover the demand that remains unmet by wind and solar. To the best of our knowledge, this technology-independent focus in combination with high-resolution data on climate change projections is unique to our study."
“Many studies show that climate change implies more frequent extreme weather, and since wind and solar electricity generation depends on the weather, i.e. wind and sunshine, then it is natural to expect that new extremes would call for a different infrastructure,” Kozarcanin added. “However, we don’t observe large differences in many of the key-metrics that we have deemed most important for a future large-scale electricity system based on wind and solar energy.”
The reasons for this are numerous. Firstly, extreme weather occurs sometimes in the present day climate and renewable systems are designed to withstand this. Also, electricity demand does not depend heavily on weather and tends to drop slightly in warmer weather.
“The slight reduction in wind and solar energy generation, i.e. the amount of electricity generated by the same wind turbine or solar cell in the different climate scenarios, does appear to be slightly negatively affected by climate change,” Kozarcanin said. “That is, warmer scenarios tend to have reduced output from the same generators. This means that more generators will be required to produce the same amount of renewable energy, making them slightly less economically competitive.”
The Aarhus University team also said however that the European electrical grid will probably require some adjustments to operate more efficiently.
"Extreme weather might require changes to the renewable generators and other parts of the system," says Kozarcanin. "For example, future wind turbines may require new types of storm protection and solar panels could need protection against super hailstorms. But our study shows that large-scale infrastructure choices, such as back-up power plant capacity, are relatively unaffected by the level of climate change."
"The main challenge for future grids will most likely be political and societal will to make the investments and proper planning for a grid topology that provides most of the potential benefit from smoothing renewable energy production between countries," he concluded.
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