Browse by author
Lookup NU author(s): Dr Hannah BloomfieldORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Resource adequacy, or ensuring that electricity supply reliably meets demand, is more challenging for wind- and solar-based electricity systems than fossil-fuel-based ones. Here, we investigate how the number of years of past weather data used in designing least-cost systems relying on wind, solar, and energy storage affects resource adequacy. We find that nearly 40 years of weather data are required to plan highly reliable systems (e.g., zero lost load over a decade). In comparison, this same adequacy could be attained with 15 years of weather data when additionally allowing traditional dispatchable generation to supply 5 % of electricity demand. We further observe that the marginal cost of improving resource adequacy increased as more years, and thus more weather variability, were considered for planning. Our results suggest that ensuring the reliability of wind- and solar-based systems will require using considerably more weather data in system planning than is the current practice. However, when considering the potential costs associated with unmet electricity demand, fewer planning years may suffice to balance costs against operational reliability.
Author(s): Ruggles TH, Virguez E, Reich N, Dowling J, Bloomfield HC, Antonini EGA, Davis SJ, Lewis NS, Caldeira K
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Advances in Applied Energy
Year: 2024
Volume: 15
Online publication date: 10/08/2024
Acceptance date: 03/08/2024
Date deposited: 27/08/2024
ISSN (electronic): 2666-7924
Publisher: Elsevier
URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adapen.2024.100185
DOI: 10.1016/j.adapen.2024.100185
Data Access Statement: All model code, input data, and analysis results are publicly available and documented at: https://github.com/Carnegie/MEM_public/tree/Ruggles_et_al_2024
Altmetrics provided by Altmetric
