A Brief Climatology of Dunkelflaute Events over and Surrounding the North and Baltic Sea Areas

Bowen Li, Sukanta Basu, Simon J. Watson and Herman W. J. Russchenberg
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Bowen Li: Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CN Delft, The Netherlands
Sukanta Basu: Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CN Delft, The Netherlands
Simon J. Watson: Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Delft University of Technology, 2629 HS Delft, The Netherlands
Herman W. J. Russchenberg: Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CN Delft, The Netherlands

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 20, 1-14

Abstract: In the coming decades, the European energy system is expected to become increasingly reliant on non-dispatchable generation such as wind and solar power. Under such a renewable energy scenario, a better characterization of the extreme weather condition ‘Dunkelflaute’, which can lead to a sustained reduction of wind and solar power, is important. In this paper, we report findings from the very first climatological study of Dunkelflaute events occurring in eleven countries surrounding the North and Baltic Sea areas. By utilizing multi-year meteorological and power production datasets, we have quantified various statistics pertaining to these events and also identified their underlying meteorological drivers. It was found that almost all periods tagged as Dunkelflaute events (with a length of more than 24 h) are in November, December, and January for these countries. On average, there are 50–100 h of such events happening in each of these three months per year. The limited wind and solar power production during Dunkelflaute events is shown to be mainly driven by large-scale high-pressure systems and extensive low-cloud coverage. Even though the possibility of simultaneous Dunkelflaute events in neighboring countries can be as high as 30–40%, such events hardly occur simultaneously in all the eleven countries. Through an interconnected EU-11 power system, the mean frequency of Dunkelflaute drops from 3–9% for the individual countries to approximately 3.5% for the combined region, highlighting the importance of aggregating production over a wide area to better manage the integration of renewable energy generation.

Keywords: climatological analysis; grid connection; power reliability; solar energy; wind energy (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: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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