Posted on: November 7, 2024
New research into the vulnerability of electricity grids served by weather-dependent renewable energy sources (WD-RES) such as solar and wind paints a hopeful picture as Ireland tries to meet its climate emissions targets, with the research showing grids with high penetration of WD-RES tend to have reduced blackouts- intensity in the United States.
This research – just published in a leading international journal Natural energy – was conducted using US blackout data from 2001 to 2020, but the results are of great interest from an Irish perspective as we rapidly transition to grids primarily supplied by WD-RES.
In 2023, 38.9% of electricity produced in Ireland came from renewable energy sources and this figure is expected to grow to over 70% by 2030.
The effects of fluctuating renewable energy production have often been discussed in the global energy transition process, but the role of WD-RES in blackouts has largely remained controversial.
“Some have argued that unstable RES are responsible for increasing grid unreliability under extreme climate conditions, while others have argued that wind and solar generation tend to be available even during extreme weather,” said Jin Zhao, Assistant Professor at Trinity’s School of Engineeringwho led the research.
“The lack of understanding of the impact of WD-RES on power outages has raised doubts about their use and, in some cases, driven pushback against wind and solar integration. Given the ambitious high renewable energy penetration and carbon emissions targets that have been set for future power systems, it was high time we improved our understanding of the role renewable energy sources play in blackouts.”
The research revealed that power systems with higher WD-RES penetration did not exhibit more outage vulnerability and when outages did occur, they were likely to have reduced intensity (as indicated by the number of customers affected, demand loss and duration) in high WD-RES penetration networks.
Furthermore, while analyzes showed that extreme weather increases a power system’s vulnerability to outages, high WD-RES penetration does not exacerbate the weather sensitivity of power sickness—even when only considering weather-induced outages.
Prof. Zhao added: “The key take home message here is that WD-RES is not the main culprit for outages during extreme weather events and the higher penetration networks tend to experience lower outage intensities when they do occur.
“This is promising from an Irish perspective, although we are a lower inertia island system which can be more sensitive than the large interconnected systems such as those seen in the US and in the power systems of continental Europe. All of this makes it super important to specifically focus on our Irish power systems with similar research and that is the next step for us – we have recently secured funding to do just that.”
The journal article can be read at Nature Energy website.
