7,417 research outputs found
Wind power development : economics and policies
This study reviews the prospects of wind power at the global level. Existing studies indicate that the earth's wind energy supply potential significantly exceeds global energy demand. Yet, only 1 percent of the global electricity demand is currently derived from wind power despite 40 percent annual growth in wind generating capacity over the past 25 years. More than 98 percent of total current wind power capacity is installed in the developed countries plus China and India. It has been estimated that wind power could supply 7 to 34 percent of global electricity needs by 2050. However, wind power faces a large number of technical, economic, financial, institutional, market, and other barriers. To overcome these barriers, many countries have employed various policy instruments, including capital subsidies, tax incentives, tradable energy certificates, feed-in tariffs, grid access guarantees and mandatory standards. Besides these policies, climate change mitigation initiatives resulting from the Kyoto Protocol (e.g., CO2-emission reduction targets in developed countries and the Clean Development Mechanism in developing countries) have played a significant role in promoting wind power.Energy Production and Transportation,Carbon Policy and Trading,Windpower,Environment and Energy Efficiency,Energy and Environment
On the Economic Value and Price-Responsiveness of Ramp-Constrained Storage
The primary concerns of this paper are twofold: to understand the economic
value of storage in the presence of ramp constraints and exogenous electricity
prices, and to understand the implications of the associated optimal storage
management policy on qualitative and quantitative characteristics of storage
response to real-time prices. We present an analytic characterization of the
optimal policy, along with the associated finite-horizon time-averaged value of
storage. We also derive an analytical upperbound on the infinite-horizon
time-averaged value of storage. This bound is valid for any achievable
realization of prices when the support of the distribution is fixed, and
highlights the dependence of the value of storage on ramp constraints and
storage capacity. While the value of storage is a non-decreasing function of
price volatility, due to the finite ramp rate, the value of storage saturates
quickly as the capacity increases, regardless of volatility. To study the
implications of the optimal policy, we first present computational experiments
that suggest that optimal utilization of storage can, in expectation, induce a
considerable amount of price elasticity near the average price, but little or
no elasticity far from it. We then present a computational framework for
understanding the behavior of storage as a function of price and the amount of
stored energy, and for characterization of the buy/sell phase transition region
in the price-state plane. Finally, we study the impact of market-based
operation of storage on the required reserves, and show that the reserves may
need to be expanded to accommodate market-based storage
Optimal household energy management and participation in ancillary services with PV production
The work presented in this paper deals with a project aiming to increase the value of photovoltaic (PV) solar production for residential application. To contribute to the development of the new functionalities for such system and the efficient control system to optimize its operation, this paper defines the possibility for the proposed system to participate to the ancillary services, particularly in active power service provider. This service of PV-based system for housing application, as it does not exist today, has led to a market design proposition in the distribution system. The mathematical model for calculating the optimal operation of system (sources, load, and the exchange power with the grid) results in a linear mix integer optimization problem where the objective is to maximize the profit obtained by participating to electricity market. The approach is illustrated in an example study case. The PV producer could benefit from its intervention on balancing market or ancillary services market despite of the impact on the profit of several kinds of uncertainty, as the intermittence of PV source.energy management ; ancillary services ; PV production ; household application
Distributed Online Modified Greedy Algorithm for Networked Storage Operation under Uncertainty
The integration of intermittent and stochastic renewable energy resources
requires increased flexibility in the operation of the electric grid. Storage,
broadly speaking, provides the flexibility of shifting energy over time;
network, on the other hand, provides the flexibility of shifting energy over
geographical locations. The optimal control of storage networks in stochastic
environments is an important open problem. The key challenge is that, even in
small networks, the corresponding constrained stochastic control problems on
continuous spaces suffer from curses of dimensionality, and are intractable in
general settings. For large networks, no efficient algorithm is known to give
optimal or provably near-optimal performance for this problem. This paper
provides an efficient algorithm to solve this problem with performance
guarantees. We study the operation of storage networks, i.e., a storage system
interconnected via a power network. An online algorithm, termed Online Modified
Greedy algorithm, is developed for the corresponding constrained stochastic
control problem. A sub-optimality bound for the algorithm is derived, and a
semidefinite program is constructed to minimize the bound. In many cases, the
bound approaches zero so that the algorithm is near-optimal. A task-based
distributed implementation of the online algorithm relying only on local
information and neighbor communication is then developed based on the
alternating direction method of multipliers. Numerical examples verify the
established theoretical performance bounds, and demonstrate the scalability of
the algorithm.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1405.778
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Mainstreaming New Renewable Energy Technologies
This paper outlines the benefits, obstacles and options for governments to support international markets for technology
development. International markets for new energy technologies offer greater scope, thereby increasing the incentives and opportunities
for technology improvements. As the market is supported by more independent governments, the confidence of technology developers
and producers that future markets for their products will exist is increasing, thus enabling capital access and inducing R&D investment
and exploration of improved production processes. The bigger markets also allow for international competition, thus allowing for the
application of the best available technology. The government challenge to induce sufficient RD&D remains and with international markets
the benefits and costs of national governments free-riding on international effort needs to be addressed. Finally, we discuss how international
co-operation can be used to evolve the energy system in such a way that it can integrate new technologies at minimum cost
The impact of wind uncertainty on the strategic valuation of distributed electricity storage
The intermittent nature of wind energy generation has introduced a new degree of uncertainty to the tactical planning of energy systems. Short-term energy balancing decisions are no longer (fully) known, and it is this lack of knowledge that causes the need for strategic thinking. But despite this observation, strategic models are rarely set in an uncertain environment. And even if they are, the approach used is often inappropriate, based on some variant of scenario analysis—what-if analysis. In this paper we develop a deterministic strategic model for the valuation of electricity storage (a battery), and ask: “Though leaving out wind speed uncertainty clearly is a simplification, does it really matter for the valuation of storage?”. We answer this question by formulating a stochastic programming model, and compare its valuation to that of its deterministic counterpart. Both models capture the arbitrage value of storage, but only the stochastic model captures the battery value stemming from wind speed uncertainty. Is the difference important? The model is tested on a case from Lancaster University’s campus energy system where a wind turbine is installed. From our analysis, we conclude that considering wind speed uncertainty can increase the estimated value of storage with up to 50 % relative to a deterministic estimate. However, we also observe cases where wind speed uncertainty is insignificant for storage valuation
The Economics of Wind Power with Energy Storage
We develop a nonlinear mathematical optimization program for investigating the economic and environmental implications of wind penetration in electrical grids and evaluating how hydropower storage could be used to offset wind power intermittence. When wind power is added to an electrical grid consisting of thermal and hydropower plants, it increases system variability and results in a need for additional peak-load, gas-fired generators. Our empirical application using load data for Alberta’s electrical grid shows that 32% wind penetration (normalized to peak demand) results in a net cost increase of 12.50/MWh. Costs of reducing CO2 emissions are estimated to be 56 per t CO2 . When pumped hydro storage is introduced in the system or the capacity of the water reservoirs is enhanced, the hydropower facility could provide most of the peak load requirements obviating the need to build large peak-load gas generators.Renewable energy, carbon costs, hydropower storage, mathematical programming
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