Future security of power supply in Germany—The role of stochastic power plant outages and intermittent generation. (30th January 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Gils, Hans Christian; Bothor, Sebastian; Genoese, Massimo; Cao, Karl‐Kiên
• Is Part Of: International journal of energy research. Volume 42:Number 5(2018)
• Page Start: 1894
• Page End: 1913
• Publication Date: 2018-01-30
• Subjects: energy system modeling -- REMix -- security of supply -- stochastic power plant outages -- variable renewable energy; Power resources -- Periodicals; Power (Mechanics) -- Periodicals; Power resources -- Research -- Periodicals; 621.042
• DOI: 10.1002/er.3957
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0363-907X

Abstract

Summary: Many power plants in Germany and Europe are approaching the end of their technical lifetime. Moreover, the increasing wind and solar power generation reduces the operation times of thermal power plants, making future investments in new generation capacity uncertain under current market conditions. Consequently, the future development of security of power supply is unclear. In this paper, we assess the impact of stochastic fluctuations in power plant availability, renewable generation, and grid load on the future security of supply in Germany. We model variations in power plant availability by application of a combined Mean‐reversion Jump‐diffusion approach. On the basis of that and using Monte‐Carlo methods, we simulate 300 different time series of availability. These profiles are fed into the fundamental power system model REMix, applied to evaluate the appearance of supply shortfalls in hourly resolution. We assess 6 scenarios for the year 2025, differing in renewable generation and demand profiles, as well as grid infrastructure. Geographical focus of the analysis is Germany, but the electricity exchange with its European neighbours is modelled as well. Our results show that the choice of the power plant availability profile can change the loss of load expectation and loss of load hours by up to 50%. However, the influence of load and renewable generation profiles is found to be significantly higher. Assuming that no new conventional power plants are built and existing plants are decommissioned at the end of their empirical lifetime, we identify supply gaps of up to 2.7 GW in Germany. Abstract : Future security of power supply in Europe is assessed with an hourly dispatch model. A statistical analysis is provided using 300 variations of power plant availability. Hourly power plant availability is found to have high impact on security of supply. Results show a high relevance of load and renewable energy generation profiles. Shortfalls may result from a lack of transmission rather than generation capacity.