The price of Non-Cooperation in a Highly Renewable European Electricity System David Schlachtberger Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) In collaboration with: Tom Brown, Stefan Schramm, Martin Greiner (Uni Aarhus) Champéry, 05.02.2016
Understanding the long term target Challenge: Decarbonizing the European energy system (EC: 95% CO2 emission reduction compared to 1990) Important questions: What infrastructure (wind, solar, hydro generators, storage, and networks) does a highly renewable electricity system require and where should it go? What is the cost-optimal combination of infrastructure that can guarantee security of supply?
Variability of wind at different scales Local: Berlin Country: Germany Continent: Europe Transmission allows smoothing on large spatial scales Hydro / chemical storage: temporal balancing
European electricity model Generators: Onshore wind Offshore wind Solar PV Natural gas Run-of-river Reservoir hydro Storage: Pumped hydro Batteries H2 storage Node (country) European Transmission: 30 nodes (countries) 52 links (HVDC) Electricity demand: Hourly historical load for full year
Wind/solar generator layouts Generation based on hourly historical weather data Layout proportional to average power density Land use and Natura2000 restrictions included
Optimization objective Given a desired CO2 emission reduction (of 95%), what is the most cost-effective energy system? Minimize ( Total system = Annualized + Marginal cost capital cost n,t cost n ) ( ) ( ) subject to: Meeting energy demand at each node n and time t Wind, solar, hydro availability for all n, t Installed capacity geographical potential for renewables Electricity transmission constraints CO2 constraint
Cost and other assumptions Quantity Cost FOM [ /kw] Lifetime [a] Wind onshore 1182 /kw 35 25 Wind offshore 2506 /kw 80 25 Solar 600 /kw 25 25 Gas 400 /kw 15 30 Battery storage 1275 /kw 12.3 20 Hydrogen storage 2070 /kw 12.2 20 2% 40 Transmission line Unit 400 /MW/km Interest rate of 7%, storage efficiency losses, only gas has CO2 emissions and marginal costs References: 2030 cost assumptions: diw (2013); Budischak et al. (2013)
Costs: No interconnecting transmission allowed Technology by energy Average cost: 82 /MWh Countries must be self-sufficient at all times; lots of storage and some gas to deal with fluctuations of wind and solar.
Costs: Moderate amount of interconnection (3-4 times today s) Technology by energy Average cost: 65 /MWh A restricted extension of interconnection goes a long way to reduce the costs. More onshore wind, less solar and storage.
Optimal techno-economic solution Technology by energy Average cost: 62 /MWh Large transmission expansion, onshore wind dominates. Public acceptance issues
Line Volume Constraints Total system costs can be comparable to today's (50-59 /MWh, 2013) Restricting transmission requires more storage to deal with variability, driving up the costs by up to 32% Compromise (~ 3-4 x today's transmission) locks in many benefits of transmission
Transmission vs Storage Optimal grid: Lines allow smoothing cheap wind energy over correlation length scales (~1000 km) More local solutions require more temporal smoothing (storage) Easier to smooth diurnal solar (1 day) than synoptic wind (3-10 days) variations with storage solar share increases, but costs also increase
Outlook: Sector Coupling Results Costs with varying transmission for sector scenario System cost [EUR billion per year] 800 700 today's grid 600 battery storage hydrogen storage gas solar onshore wind offshore wind gas boiler resistive heater heat pump transmission lines 400 300 700 600 400 300 200 100 100 0 100 200 300 400 Allowed interconnecting transmission lines [TWkm] 500 Heating and transport sector, with inflexible demand Comparable to electricity-only scenario water tanks gas boiler resistive heater heat pump transmission lines today's grid 500 200 0 hydrogen storage gas solar onshore wind offshore wind 800 500 0 Costs with varying transmission for sector BEV V2G T180 scenario 900 System cost [EUR billion per year] 900 0 100 200 300 400 Allowed interconnecting transmission lines [TWkm] 500 With BEV, V2G, long-term TES Costs comparable to today's ( 337 billion / yr, excluding 'externalities') benefits of inter-connecting transmission now much weaker
Conclusions The cost-optimal system has lots of onshore wind and international network expansion, with costs comparable to today s If countries do not cooperate on grid expansion, storage becomes necessary to deal with the variability of renewables, driving up costs by 32% - the price of non-cooperation Flexible sector coupling using grid-friendly Battery Electric Vehicles and long-term Thermal Energy Storage (TES) can be affordable and allows to choose solutions based on, e.g., public acceptance of grids Caveat: Countries are copperplates next presentation