Toggle Main Menu Toggle Search

Open Access padlockePrints

A copula-based assessment of renewable energy droughts across Europe

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Hannah BloomfieldORCiD

Downloads


Licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).


Abstract

Meeting carbon-reduction targets will require thorough consideration of climate variability and climate change due to the increasing share of climate-sensitive renewable energy sources (RES). One of the main concerns arises from situations of low renewable production and high demand, which can hinder the power system. We analysed energy droughts, defined as periods of low energy production (wind plus solar generation) or high residual load (demand minus production), in terms of two main properties: duration and severity. We estimated the joint return periods associated with energy droughts of residual load and power production. We showed that moderate winter energy droughts of both low renewable production and high residual load occur every half a year, while summer events occur every 3.6 and 2.4 years (on average). As expected, the occurrence of energy droughts tends to decrease with the degree of the severity of the energy drought, and moderate and extreme energy droughts showed longer return periods for most countries. In general, we found a large variability across Europe in summer, with some countries (e.g. Italy) being more sensitive to energy droughts. Our results highlight the relevance of sharing RES during prolonged periods of low production and high demand.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Otero N, Martius O, Allen S, Bloomfield HC, Schaefli B

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Renewable Energy

Year: 2022

Volume: 201

Issue: 1

Pages: 667-677

Print publication date: 01/12/2022

Online publication date: 02/11/2022

Acceptance date: 17/10/2022

Date deposited: 23/11/2023

ISSN (print): 0960-1481

ISSN (electronic): 1879-0682

Publisher: Elsevier Ltd

URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2022.10.091

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2022.10.091

Data Access Statement: The time series of energy data used within this study are available from the Reading Research data repository:https://researchdata.reading.ac.uk/227. The code is available upon request to the corresponding author.


Altmetrics

Altmetrics provided by Altmetric


Funding

Funder referenceFunder name
Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research (OCCR)

Share