Challenges and Opportunities of Power Systems from Smart Homes to Super-Grids
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Ambio 2016, 45(Suppl. 1):S50–S62 DOI 10.1007/s13280-015-0733-x Challenges and opportunities of power systems from smart homes to super-grids Philipp Kuhn, Matthias Huber, Johannes Dorfner, Thomas Hamacher Abstract The world’s power systems are facing a scale systems, whereas the intermittent nature of generation structural change including liberalization of markets and favors large-scale systems. To facilitate discussion, we integration of renewable energy sources. This paper categorize the various approaches in three scopes, which describes the challenges that lie ahead in this process and roughly refer the geographical scale: local, national, points out avenues for overcoming different problems at international. different scopes, ranging from individual homes to Local scope: the local scope reaches from individual international super-grids. We apply energy system homes to cities. The discussion is focused on politically or models at those different scopes and find a trade-off privately motivated plans to become energy autonomous. between technical and social complexity. Small-scale Furthermore, decentralized technologies like photovoltaic systems would require technological breakthroughs, (PV) have reached grid parity which allows for cost especially for storage, but individual agents can and do reductions through own production. already start to build and operate such systems. In contrast, National scope: at the national scope, governments can large-scale systems could potentially be more efficient set the agenda for energy policy and regulation. The cur- from a techno-economic point of view. However, new rent setting of these conditions is a result of political political frameworks are required that enable long-term decisions in the past (e.g., the Renewable Energy Sources cooperation among sovereign entities through mutual trust. Act in Germany) and national objectives for the future Which scope first achieves its breakthrough is not clear yet. (e.g., increase share of renewables, meet greenhouse gas emission targets). Keywords Renewable energy Á Sustainability Á International scope: the discussion at this scope is led by Scaling Á Transformation of energy systems Á the awareness that a larger system reduces the integration Socio-technical complexity challenge due to smoothing effects from variable generation of wind and solar. Furthermore, system planning at this scope enables the participation of larger areas with a high potential INTRODUCTION TO THE CHALLENGES AHEAD in a common European market (e.g., high PV-potential in southern countries; high wind potential in northern coun- The integration of intermittent energy sources in the power tries; large storage potential, e.g., in Norway). system creates manifold challenges and problems, which In all three scopes, the integration of fluctuating have not been overcome yet. Breakthroughs in system renewables is being realized currently. Which scope(s) are design, transport and storage technologies, as well as to be preferred when trying to develop towards a more economic organization are necessary. sustainable energy supply is a point of active discussion. The distributed nature of renewable generation contra- By themselves, visions on each scope are reasonable. dicts the traditional power system structure with large A widely accepted new fundamental power system centralized plants. This contradiction opens the discussion design does not exist yet. Current discussion is largely whether a new fundamental design is necessary. On the one limited to individual proposals and demonstrations of hand, decentralized generation suggests shifting to small- individual solutions. The question is then what the general Ó The Author(s) 2016. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com 123 www.kva.se/en Ambio 2016, 45(Suppl. 1):S50–S62 S51 solution will look like: top-down or bottom-up? The top- and found that there is no chance for profitability in the down solution would create a new system design as a result current system with current price structures. In Staudacher of new regulation following a pre-defined master plan. In a (2012b), the same authors show that the PV/Battery systems bottom-up solution, a new system would emerge from would allow a degree of autonomy of 50–60 %, but values individual projects. Regulation in that case would adapt to higher than that can hardly be achieved. Quaschning (2012) new issues as they occur. The path which will finally be found that even though fully autonomous electricity supply chosen is not obvious at the moment. What became quite will not be economical, the addition of PV systems in homes obvious in recent years is that decisions of individual can be very helpful in reducing the electricity bill. The countries, like the strong growth of intermittent, renewable employment of electric heaters helps utilize excess elec- energy sources in Germany, are not without impact on the tricity and improves profitability. neighboring countries. This leads to the observation that Increasing the system size leads us from individual decisions on any scope cannot be made independently from homes to small microgrids. Marnay and Venkataramanan one’s surroundings. (2006) show several advantages of microgrids that include This paper shows and discusses results of energy models the chance for combined heat and power plants (CHP) to be which are developed and used at the Institute for Renew- employed efficiently, increasing reliability of supply, and a able and Sustainable Energy Systems at Technische centralized planning of the entire grid. Hatziargyriou et al. Universita¨tMu¨nchen. The mentioned scopes are addressed (2007) give an overview of past and ongoing research in by multiple approaches. the field around the globe. They find differing foci and Challenges and opportunities of different system gran- drivers for research and applications in different places. ularities are discussed and brought into a theoretical Whereas in Europe environmental benefits are most framework. As a conclusion, we identify a trade-off important, other regions are researching the topic because between technological and political challenges depending of reliability reasons. Our research has to be seen in the on the investigated scope and system sizes. European context with a focus on chances for integration of renewables and the chances to get independent of elec- tricity delivery from utilities. LOCAL SOLUTION The study of energy autonomy in cities is part of the broader study of urban metabolism, last broadly reviewed Motivation/intended effect in Kennedy et al. (2011) and recently extended by Pincetl et al. (2012). The idea is to focus on a city’s input and In recent discussions about the future electricity supply, the output flows of goods and energy. The ultimate goal is to phrase of energy autonomy came high to the agenda. The develop closed cycles for each major flow, resulting in a idea of very local energy and electricity systems can be sustainable operation of the whole system. Lund (2011) approached from the perspective of smart homes, where investigates techno-economic aspect of satisfying signifi- individuals want to be independent of grid supply by cant parts of urban energy demand using a spatial–temporal generating electricity with PV and combined heat and model and case studies for the two cities Helsinki and power (CHP) plants, up to the scale of cities and political Shanghai. He finds that power-to-heat technologies, toge- regions that claim to develop plans for getting independent ther with sufficiently sized local thermal storage could of external energy supply. greatly contribute to higher RES integration on the local scale. Short literature review Own research: Model/scenario description The literature on this topic is broad and we focus on several aspects here that analyze the techno-economic possibilities In order to show the challenges that lie ahead for decen- for renewable integration in decentralized electricity tralized electricity systems, we show scenario results systems. researching the level of autonomy that can be reached by There is research in the direction of energy autonomous PV systems in individual homes, in small communities, as homes that tries to figure out the maximal degree of auton- well as in cities. Two different models are applied for the omy that can be reached by decentralized supply. Much of research presented here. the research in the field focusses on the German market as The first model that is applied to individual homes and feed-in tariffs triggered PV installations on many homes and small communities is a linear optimization-based dispatch people are now thinking about new business models model that finds a cost-minimal solution for the dispatch of including increased self-supply. Staudacher (2012a) inves- storage, electricity from grids, and CHP power plants. tigated whether autonomy could be economically beneficial Real-world data for 15-min electricity load were available. Ó The Author(s) 2016. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com www.kva.se/en 123 S52 Ambio 2016, 45(Suppl. 1):S50–S62 Fig. 1 Degree of autonomy for homes with PV systems and batteries of different sizes (Huber et al. 2013a) Furthermore, generation time series for PV plants was used depicted in Fig. 2. A clear flattening is observed and peaks as developed by Janker (2015). A description of the model are reduced dramatically in the microgrid. It seems obvious and the data applied can be found in Huber et al. (2013a). that it is easier to supply the average load (black curve) The second model operates on the district to urban scale. than the highly volatile loads. Higher degrees of autonomy It is an optimal planning model for urban district heating at lower costs can be expected for those microgrids com- networks. Given are locations and prices for heat genera- pared to individual homes. tion, as well as peak and annual data for heat consumption Figure 3 shows the reached degree of autonomy for this per building. Demand data are aggregated to up to 104 microgrid including PV, battery, as well as CHP plants.