A Quantitative Study on the Requirement for Additional Inertia in the European Power System until 2050 and the Potential Role of Wind Power

Christos Agathokleous and Jimmy Ehnberg
Additional contact information
Christos Agathokleous: Department of Electrical Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, 412 96 Gothenburg, Sweden
Jimmy Ehnberg: Department of Electrical Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, 412 96 Gothenburg, Sweden

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 9, 1-14

Abstract: A significant amount of conventional power plants in the European power system is anticipated to be replaced by solar and wind power in the future. This may require alternative sources for inertia support. The purpose of the paper is to learn about the consequences on the frequency deviation after a fault in the European power system when more wind and solar are introduced and when wind is considered as a possible provider of inertia. This study quantifies the expected maximum requirement for additional inertia in the future European power system up to 2050. Furthermore, we investigated the possibility of wind power to meet this additional need by providing emulated inertia. The European power system of the EU-28 countries has been clustered to the five synchronous grids, UCTE, Nordic, UK, Baltic and Irish. The future European energy mix is simulated considering twelve different scenarios. Production units are dispatched according to their expected environmental impacts, which closely follow the minimum natural contribution of inertia, in descending order. The available capacity for all the types of production is considered the same as the installed. For all the simulated scenarios the worst case is examined, which means that a sudden disconnection of the largest production unit of the dispatched types is considered. Case study results reveal that, in most cases, additional inertia will be required but wind power may fully cover this need for up to 84% of all simulated horizons among all the scenarios on the UCTE grid, and for up to 98%, 86%, 99% and 86% on the Nordic, UK, Baltic and Irish grids, respectively.

Keywords: emulated inertia; European power system; frequency response; inertia support; synthetic inertia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/9/2309/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/9/2309/ (text/html)

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:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:9:p:2309-:d:354563

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().