EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Can we phase-out all of them? Probabilistic assessments of security of electricity supply for the German case

Lars Nolting and Aaron Praktiknjo

Applied Energy, 2020, vol. 263, issue C, No S0306261920302166

Abstract: Against the backdrop of expansions of intermittent renewable energy capacity, planned nuclear phase-outs, and current debates on the additional mothballing of coal-fired power plants in central Europe, there is a substantial increase in uncertainty regarding security of electricity supply. In this context, we present a probabilistic and scenario-based analysis of impacts on security of supply for Germany as a case-study in the medium-term perspective (years 2020, 2022, and 2023). For our analysis, we introduce the energy security assessment module of the JERICHO energy system model from RWTH Aachen University. Our model allows for an hourly probabilistic simulation of security of supply and accounts for stochastic characteristics of (non-)availability of conventional generators, renewable feed-in, electricity demand, and import potentials from central-European countries. To increase the robustness of results, we use a comprehensive dataset of temperature, wind speeds, solar radiation and water levels from weather years 1986 to 2015 as input for our simulations. Our results indicate that Germany is unlikely to maintain its quasi-absolute levels of security of supply in the near future with a mean Loss of Load Expectation (LoLE) of up to 2.6 h in scenario year 2023. However, this does not necessarily imply that future levels of security of supply are insufficient. There is need for further assessments on identifying threshold levels for security of supply, which are economically efficient and acceptable for society. Our results also indicate that the sensitivity of security of supply for meteorological changes increases with reductions of conventional power plants. Finally, we demonstrate that the dependency of security of supply on imports from neighboring countries increases substantially calling for increased international coordination of national energy policies.

Keywords: Security of supply; Energy system modeling; Simulation; Probabilistic modeling; International capacity planning; Energy transition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261920302166
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:263:y:2020:i:c:s0306261920302166

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.2020.114704

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 ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:appene:v:263:y:2020:i:c:s0306261920302166