Repository logo
  • Log In
    New user? Click here to register.Have you forgotten your password?
University College Dublin
    Colleges & Schools
    Statistics
    All of DSpace
  • Log In
    New user? Click here to register.Have you forgotten your password?
  1. Home
  2. College of Engineering & Architecture
  3. School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
  4. Electrical and Electronic Engineering Research Collection
  5. Is the transition to zero carbon power economically feasible? The case of a 70% variable renewables power system
 
  • Details
Options

Is the transition to zero carbon power economically feasible? The case of a 70% variable renewables power system

Author(s)
Stanley, Sarah  
Lahon, Rinalini  
O'Dwyer, Ciara  
Ryan, L. (Lisa B.)  
Flynn, Damian  
Uri
http://hdl.handle.net/10197/26575
Date Issued
2021-06-25
Date Available
2024-08-14T15:40:19Z
Abstract
Ambitious national renewable electricity targets in Europe have resulted in countries without significant hydro resources, such as Denmark, Ireland and Spain, aiming to source over 70% of their annual electricity consumption from variable renewables by as early as 2030. A high share of wind and solar power in the electricity system introduces numerous technical and operational issues, as well as raising questions about the financial viability of generators in the current electricity market. The objective of this paper is to examine whether such high shares of renewable electricity are economically feasible, under the current electricity market design and technical constraints, and the policy implications. We model system security, renewables curtailment, market prices and net present values of different technology types in 2030 under various renewable generation and electricity load profiles and scenarios. We find that high shares of renewable electricity in isolated systems such as Ireland could lead to curtailment of up to 15% but that additional interconnection, battery storage and dynamic load behaviour reduce this. Marginal prices fall to near zero in periods of high generation of renewable electricity. We estimate that this, combined with curtailment, may lead to insufficient revenues from the electricity price alone in existing electricity markets to cover the costs of generation for many renewable and conventional power plants. Changes to the design of electricity markets are needed to provide additional revenue streams from capacity markets and tariffs designed for system services and make future decarbonised electricity systems economically feasible.
Sponsorship
Science Foundation Ireland
European Commission Horizon 2020
Other Sponsorship
Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications
Type of Material
Conference Publication
Subjects

Renewable electricity...

National targets

Backbone energy syste...

Web versions
http://www.eaere-conferences.org/index.php?p=249
https://anymeets.com/event/112/agenda
Language
English
Status of Item
Peer reviewed
Journal
Annual Conference of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists
Conference Details
The 26th Annual Conference of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (EAERE 2021), Berlin, Germany, 23-25 June 2021
This item is made available under a Creative Commons License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ie/
File(s)
Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Name

Stanley - 70 pc RES power system - EAERE 2021 (clean).pdf

Size

1.25 MB

Format

Adobe PDF

Checksum (MD5)

2e8dc8f915d3f5c8a6e0055470689678

Owning collection
Electrical and Electronic Engineering Research Collection
Mapped collections
Economics Research Collection•
Energy Institute Research Collection

Item descriptive metadata is released under a CC-0 (public domain) license: https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/cc0/.
All other content is subject to copyright.

Built with DSpace-CRIS software - Extension maintained and optimized by 4Science

  • Cookie settings
  • Privacy policy
  • End User Agreement