Innovation Landscape Brief: Flexibility in Conventional Power Plants, International Renewable Energy Agency, Abu Dhabi
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FLEXIBILITY IN CONVENTIONAL POWER PLANTS INNOVATION LANDSCAPE BRIEF © IRENA 2019 Unless otherwise stated, material in this publication may be freely used, shared, copied, reproduced, printed and/or stored, provided that appropriate acknowledgement is given of IRENA as the source and copyright holder. Material in this publication that is attributed to third parties may be subject to separate terms of use and restrictions, and appropriate permissions from these third parties may need to be secured before any use of such material. ISBN 978-92-9260-148-5 Citation: IRENA (2019), Innovation landscape brief: Flexibility in conventional power plants, International Renewable Energy Agency, Abu Dhabi. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This report was prepared by the Innovation team at IRENA with text authored by Arina Anisie and Francisco Boshell with additional contributions and support from Harsh Kanani and Anusha Rajagopalan (KPMG India). Valuable external review was provided by Peter Markusse (Energienet), Miguel Gonzalez-Salazar (Vattenfall), Saara Kujala and Marko Vainikka (Wärtsilä), along with Martina Lyons, Nina Litman-Roventa, Nadeem Goussous and Paul Komor (IRENA). Report available online: www.irena.org/publications For questions or to provide feedback: [email protected] DISCLAIMER This publication and the material herein are provided “as is”. All reasonable precautions have been taken by IRENA to verify the reliability of the material in this publication. However, neither IRENA nor any of its officials, agents, data or other third- party content providers provides a warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, and they accept no responsibility or liability for any consequence of use of the publication or material herein. The information contained herein does not necessarily represent the views of all Members of IRENA. The mention of specific companies or certain projects or products does not imply that they are endorsed or recommended by IRENA in preference to others of a similar nature that are not mentioned. The designations employed and the presentation of material herein do not imply the expression of any opinion on the part of IRENA concerning the legal status of any region, country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of frontiers or boundaries. Photographs are from Shutterstock unless otherwise indicated. This document does not represent the official position of IRENA on any particular topic. Rather, it is intended as a contribution to technical discussions on the promotion of renewable energy. FLEXIBILITY IN CONVENTIONAL POWER PLANTS www.irena.org BENEFITS 1 Refurbishments can increase the flexibility of conventional power plants, enabling the integration of higher shares of variable renewable energy (VRE) Higher ramp rate Reduced VRE curtailment Shorter Power plant Lower start-up minimum time flexibility load Greater system flexibility Shorter minimum uptime and runtime 2 KEY ENABLING FACTORS 3 SNAPSHOT Update market design to reward flexible ➜ China: Flexible thermal plant operation resulted operation in a 30% reduction in VRE curtailment ➜ India: Reducing minimum generation levels for Adapt contracts for fuel supply and capacity thermal plants from 70% to 55% has reduced VRE provision curtailment from 3.5% to 1.4% ➜ Germany: Refurbishment of a coal power plant Update standards, grid codes and market rules reduced minimum load by 170 MW and increased ramp rate by 10 MW per minute FLEXIBILITY IN CONVENTIONAL POWER PLANTS Existing conventional plants, operating alongside growing shares of renewable power generation, can be refurbished to provide supply-side flexibility. This helps to accommodate 3 solar PV and wind generation variability in the short to medium term. INNOVATION LANDSCAPE BRIEF ABOUT THIS BRIEF his brief is part of the IRENA project “Innovation to create actual solutions. Solutions to drive the Tlandscape for a renewable-powered future”, uptake of solar and wind power span four broad which maps the relevant innovations, identifies the dimensions of innovation: enabling technologies, synergies and formulates solutions for integrating business models, market design and system high shares of variable renewable energy (VRE) operation. into power systems. Along with the synthesis report, the project The synthesis report, Innovation landscape for a includes a series of briefs, each covering one of renewable-powered future: Solutions to integrate 30 key innovations identified across those four variable renewables (IRENA, 2019), illustrates the dimensions. The 30 innovations are listed in the need for synergies among different innovations figure below. INNOVATION DIMENSIONS ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES BUSINESS MODELS MARKET DESIGN SYSTEM OPERATION 1 Utility scale batteries 12 Aggregators 17 Increasing time 25 Future role of distribution 2 Behind-the-meter 13 Peer-to-peer electricity granularity in electricity system operators batteries trading markets 26 Co-operation between 14 Energy-as-a-service 18 Increasing space transmission and 3 Electric-vehicle granularity in electricity distribution system smart charging 15 Community-ownership markets operators 4 Renewable models 19 Innovative ancillary power-to-heat 16 Pay-as-you-go models 27 Advanced forecasting services 5 Renewable of variable renewable 20 Re-designing capacity power-to-hydrogen power generation markets 28 Innovative operation 6 Internet of Things 21 Regional markets of pumped hydropower 7 Artificial intelligence 22 storage and big data 23 Market integration 8 Blockchain 29 Virtual power lines of distributed energy 30 Dynamic line rating 9 Renewable mini-grids resources 10 Supergrids 24 Net billing schemes 11 Flexibility in conventional power plants 4 FLEXIBILITY IN CONVENTIONAL POWER PLANTS Improving the flexibility of thermal power sources, as a short- to medium-term solution, is The brief is structured as follows: an important component of the energy system transformation with an increasing share of I Description renewable energy. It supplements other flexibility solutions such as energy storage, demand-side II Contribution to power sector transformation management and increased interconnection. For the foreseeable future in many regional contexts, III Key factors to enable deployment existing conventional power plants will operate alongside renewable energy plants and will play IV Current status and examples of ongoing an essential role in accommodating increasing initiatives supply-side variability. This brief examines how less flexible generation technologies can V Implementation requirements: Checklist be improved through retrofits to support VRE integration, unlocking flexibility from existing infrastructure. 5 INNOVATION LANDSCAPE BRIEF I. DESCRIPTION ealing with variability and uncertainty in While most conventional plants have limited Dbalancing the power system is not a new issue flexibility, emerging technological innovations and for power system operation. Demand has always retrofits can enhance their ability to better respond been variable to some extent and generation has to variability in renewable energy generation. typically been adjusted to meet the demand in Increasing the flexibility of conventional power real time. Integrating a higher share of VRE in plants involves retrofitting certain physical the system increases variability, which in turn components, as well as making operational increases the need for more flexible generators modifications to achieve the objectives shown in in the system.1 Figure 1. Figure 1: Objectives of flexibilization • With shorter start-up times, the plant can quickly reach full load. Shorter start-up time and lower • Rapid start-up signicantly improves the operational exibility of a plant. start-up costs • Costs associated with the start-ups include more frequent maintenance and additional fuel consumption. • Operating thermal plants at lower loads increases the bandwith of Lower minimum their operation, increasing exibility. load and improved • Most thermal power plants experience a drastic reduction in their fuel part-load efciency eciency at low loads, and therefore improving this is an important element of increasing exibility. • The rate at witch a plant can change its net power during operation Higher ramp rate is dened as the ramp rate. With higher ramp rates, the plant can quickly alter its production in line with system needs. Shorter minimum • Reducing the minimum time that the plant must be kept running after start-up, or remain closed after shutdown, allows a plant to uptime and runtime react more rapidy. Adapted from: Vella (2017), Agora Energiewende (2017). 1 Flexible operation of thermal plants refers to their capability to cope with the variability and uncertainty that solar and wind generation introduce at different time scales, avoiding curtailment of power from these VRE sources and reliably supplying all customer energy demand (IRENA, 2018). This brief addresses short-term flexible operation, from seconds to hours. 6 FLEXIBILITY IN CONVENTIONAL POWER PLANTS Conventional power sources range from baseload cost of energy (LCOE), since the capital cost and power plants, characterised by lower flexibility, fixed expenses are divided over fewer units of to peaking power plants, characterised by produced electricity. Furthermore, operating at relatively high levels of flexibility. For example, low load factors reduces plant efficiency thereby nuclear power plants are by definition inflexible, increasing fuel costs per unit. Operating a plant followed