A spatially explicit planning approach for power systems with a high share of renewable energy sources

Ni Wang, Remco A. Verzijlbergh, Petra W. Heijnen and Paulien M. Herder

Applied Energy, 2020, vol. 260, issue C, No S0306261919319208

Abstract: Variable Renewable Energy Sources (VRES) are characterized by intensive land-use and variable production. In existing optimization models that minimize the total cost of the energy system, location-specific VRES production profiles are often used to estimate VRES potential, but land-use and land cover aspects have been largely ignored. In this study, we therefore connect the literature in land cover assessment, VRES potential estimation and energy system optimization modelling by proposing a spatially explicit planning approach. This approach was applied to a case of the Netherlands to showcase its applicability and strength and to give results towards various RES targets. A baseline land-use scenario, a scenario with stricter constraints on land-use that reflects social resistance and spatial policy on wind energy and, thirdly, a scenario assuming unlimited land availability were analyzed. The baseline scenario results show the optimal geographical distribution of the generation capacities over the Netherlands. Wind energy dominates the generation mix and storage is only present at the 100% RES target. Under the strict constraints on land-use, 92% of the suitable land in the country will be deployed to place wind turbines in order to reach 100% RES share compared to 37% in the baseline case. However, the cost of electricity only increases by no more than 5 €/MWh. The unlimited land scenario highlights that the regional optimized capacities are infeasible. Apart from the useful results from the case study, the proposed approach is a first-of-a-kind contribution to the literature and provides a data-driven way to operationalize the location-specific land-use of VRES such that the role of the constraints on the land-use of VRES can be revealed and that policy-relevant results can be obtained.

Keywords: Variable Renewable Energy Sources (VRES); Generation mix; Land-use; VRES potential; Optimization modelling; Spatial planning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261919319208
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:260:y:2020:i:c:s0306261919319208

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2019.114233

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().