Characterizing curtailed and uneconomic renewable power in the mid-continent independent system operator

Andrew A. Chien; Fan Yang; Chaojie Zhang; Andrew A. Chien; Fan Yang; Chaojie Zhang

doi:10.3934/energy.2018.2.376

AIMS Energy

2018, Volume 6, Issue 2: 376-401. doi: 10.3934/energy.2018.2.376

Previous Article Next Article

Research article Topical Sections

Characterizing curtailed and uneconomic renewable power in the mid-continent independent system operator

1.
Department of Computer Science, The University of Chicago, 5801 S. Ellis, Chicago, IL 60637,USA
2.
Mathematics and Computer Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 Cass Avenue,Lemont, IL 60439, USA

Received: 04 March 2018 Accepted: 23 April 2018 Published: 03 May 2018

As power grids incorporate increased renewable generation such as wind and solar, their variability creates growing challenges for grid stability and effciency. We study two facets: power that the grid is unable to accept (curtailment), and power that is assigned zero economic value by the grid (negative or zero price). Collectively we term these stranded power or SP. We study stranded power in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), characterizing quantity and temporal structure. First, stranded power is available in the MISO grid 99% of the time, and often in intervals >100 hours, with characteristic seasonal and time-of-day patterns. Average stranded power often exceeds 1 GW, with duty factors as high as 30%. About 30% of all wind generation in MISO is stranded. Examination of the top 10 individual sites shows stranded power can be as high as 70% duty factor and 250 MW. Trends over the past 3.5 years suggest stranded power is a persistent phenomenon. The study characterizes opportunities to exploit stranded power. We consider using energy storage to increase the utility of stranded power. For a range of power levels and uniformly-distributed storage, adding 5 hours of storage doubles duty factor to 30% at 4 MW, but another 95 hours is required for the next 15% increase. At 4 MW with 50 hours of storage, only 3 of 200 sites reach 100% duty factor, and with 100 hours required for the next 10 sites. Higher power levels require 100’s of hours. Storage at the top 10 sites is more productive, 5 hours increases duty factor to 70% at 4 MW, but further storage has diminishing benefits. Studies of the amount of power served by storage show that distribution to the best sites provides 2 to 3.7-fold advantages over uniform distribution.
- renewable power,
- green computing,
- power grid,
- energy markets
Citation: Andrew A. Chien, Fan Yang, Chaojie Zhang. Characterizing curtailed and uneconomic renewable power in the mid-continent independent system operator[J]. AIMS Energy, 2018, 6(2): 376-401. doi: 10.3934/energy.2018.2.376

Related Papers:

Abstract

As power grids incorporate increased renewable generation such as wind and solar, their variability creates growing challenges for grid stability and effciency. We study two facets: power that the grid is unable to accept (curtailment), and power that is assigned zero economic value by the grid (negative or zero price). Collectively we term these stranded power or SP. We study stranded power in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), characterizing quantity and temporal structure. First, stranded power is available in the MISO grid 99% of the time, and often in intervals >100 hours, with characteristic seasonal and time-of-day patterns. Average stranded power often exceeds 1 GW, with duty factors as high as 30%. About 30% of all wind generation in MISO is stranded. Examination of the top 10 individual sites shows stranded power can be as high as 70% duty factor and 250 MW. Trends over the past 3.5 years suggest stranded power is a persistent phenomenon. The study characterizes opportunities to exploit stranded power. We consider using energy storage to increase the utility of stranded power. For a range of power levels and uniformly-distributed storage, adding 5 hours of storage doubles duty factor to 30% at 4 MW, but another 95 hours is required for the next 15% increase. At 4 MW with 50 hours of storage, only 3 of 200 sites reach 100% duty factor, and with 100 hours required for the next 10 sites. Higher power levels require 100’s of hours. Storage at the top 10 sites is more productive, 5 hours increases duty factor to 70% at 4 MW, but further storage has diminishing benefits. Studies of the amount of power served by storage show that distribution to the best sites provides 2 to 3.7-fold advantages over uniform distribution.

References

[1]	Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2014) Climate change 2014: Synthesis report. Available from: http://www.ipcc.ch.
[2]	Gore A (2006) An inconvenient truth. Documentary Film.
[3]	United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (1997) Kyoto protocol. Available from: http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/2830.php.
[4]	United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (2015) Paris climate change conference. Available from: http://unfccc.int/meetings/paris_nov_2015/meeting/8926.php.
[5]	California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Available from: http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/ PUC/energy/Renewables.
[6]	Megerian C, et al. (2015) Gov. Brown signs climate change bill to spur renewable energy, e ciency standards. Los Angeles Times Newspaper.
[7]	US EPA (2015) Plan requirements for greenhouse gas emissions from electric utility generating units constructed on or before january 8, 2014; model trading rules. Federal Register.
[8]	Denholm P, Margolis R (2016) Energy storage requirements for achieving 50% solar photovoltaic energy penetration in california. Tech. rep., US Department of Energy, National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
[9]	Renewable Energy13.4% of US Electricity Generation in 2014. Available from: http: //cleantechnica.com/2015/03/10/renewable-energy-13-4-of-us-electricity- generation-in-2014-exclusive/.
[10]	Lew D, et al. (2013) Wind and solar curtailment. In: International Workshop on Large-Scale Integration of Wind Power Into Power Systems.
[11]	Bird L, et al. (2013) Integrating variable renewable energy: Challenges and solutions. National Renewable Energy Laboratory .
[12]	GWEC (2016) Global wind report: Annual market update. Tech. rep., GlobalWind Energy Council. Documents curtailment around the world.
[13]	Steel J (2015) The what, when and how of texas electricity prices going negative. Available from: https://cleantechnica.com/2015/10/01/texas-electricity-prices- going-negative/.
[14]	Coren M J (2016) Germany had so much renewable energy on sunday that it had to pay people to use electricity. Available from: http://qz.com/680661/germany-had-so-much-renewable- energy-on-sunday-that-it-had-to-pay-people-to-use-electricity/.
[15]	Martin R (2016) Germany runs up against the limits of renewables. Technology Review .
[16]	Bird L, Cochran J, Wang X (2014) Wind and Solar Energy Curtailment: Experience and Practices in the United States. Tech. rep., NREL.
[17]	Paul Denholm K C, O'Connell M (2016) On the path to sunshot: Emerging issues and challenges in integrating high levels of solar into the electrical generation and transmission system. Tech. rep., US Department of Energy, National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
[18]	E3 (2014) Investigating a higher renewables portfolio standard in california: Executive summary. Tech. rep., Report from Energy and Economics, Inc.
[19]	Martin R (2016) Texas and california have too much renewable energy. Technology Review .
[20]	Krauss C, Cardwell D (2015) A texas utility o ers a nighttime special: Free electricity. Available from: http://nyti.ms/1kDA8Iu.
[21]	MISO. Revenue su ciency guarantees.
[22]	Wiser R H, Mills A D, Seel J, et al. (2017) Impacts of variable renewable energy on bulk power system assets, pricing, and costs. Tech. Rep. LBNL-2001082. A link to a webinar recorded on December 13, 2017 can be found at https://youtu.be/EMrFAklQnPI.
[23]	Kies A, Schyska B U, von Bremen L (2016) Curtailment in highly renewable power system and its e ect on capacity factors. Energies 9.
[24]	Power outages a ect thousands in San Diego. http://www.10news.com/news/power- outages-affecting-thousands-in-san-diego-092015.
[25]	California ISO (CAISO), Locational Marginal Pricing (LMP): Basics of Nodal Price Calculation. Tech. rep., CAISO Market Operations.
[26]	Megerian C, Panzar J (2015) Gov. Brown signs climate change bill to spur renewable energy, e ciency standards. Los Angeles Times Newspaper.
[27]	Wind Vision. http://energy.gov/eere/wind/wind-vision.
[28]	Chien A A, et al. (2015) The zero-carbon cloud: High-value, dispatchable demand for renewable power generators. The Electricity Journal 110–118.
[29]	Yang F, Chien A A (2016) ZCCloud: Exploring Wasted Green Power for High-Performance Computing. In: IPDPS'16.
[30]	na. Water splitting. Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_splitting.
[31]	na. Haber process: Nitrogen fixing. Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Haber_process.
[32]	Antminer. Antminer s9, bitcoin mining accelerator. Available from: http://www. antminerdistribution.com/antminer-s9/.
[33]	The us digital manufacturing design innovation institute. Available from: http://dmdii. uilabs.org/.
[34]	Fikes B J (2015) State's biggest desal plant to open: What it means. Available from: http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/environment/sdut-poseidon- water-desalination-carlsbad-opening-2015dec13-htmlstory.html.
[35]	Kintisch E (2014) Can sucking co2 out of the atmosphere really work? Technology Review https://www.technologyreview.com/s/531346/can-sucking-co2-out-of-the- atmosphere-really-work/.
[36]	Fu Y, Li Z (2006) Di erent models and properties on lmp calculations. In: 2006 IEEE Power Engineering Society General Meeting, 11 pp.–.
[37]	MISO. https://www.misoenergy.org/.
[38]	CAISO (2014) Iso storage pilot projects. https://www.caiso.com/Documents/ FastFacts_ISOStoragePilotProjects-AdvancingSmarterGrid.pdf.
[39]	Tesla (2016) TeslaPowerwall. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Powerwall. 40.CPUC (2013) Energy storage procurement framework and design program. http://docs.cpuc. ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Published/G000/M078/K912/78912194.PDF.
[40]	41.Kim K, Yang F, Zavala V, et al. (2016) Data centers as dispatchable loads to harness stranded power. IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy DOI 10.1109/TSTE.2016.2593607.
[41]	42.Han S, et al. (2010) Development of an optimal vehicle-to-grid aggregator for frequency regulation. Smart Grid, IEEE Transactions on 1: 65–72. doi: 10.1109/TSG.2010.2045163
[42]	43.Zhao P, et al. (2013) Evaluation of commercial building HVAC systems as frequency regulation providers. Energy and Buildings 67: 225–235. doi: 10.1016/j.enbuild.2013.08.031
[43]	44.Todd D, et al. (2008) Providing reliability services through demand response: A preliminary evaluation of the demand response capabilities of Alcoa Inc. ORNL/TM 233.
[44]	45.Zhenhua Liu I L, Mohsenian-Rad H, Wierman A (2014) Opportunities and challenges for data center demand response. In: Proceedings of IGCC. IEEE.
[45]	46.Yang F, et al. (2016) ZCCloud: Exploring wasted green power for high-performance computing. In: IPDPS 2016. IEEE.
[46]	47.Chien A A, et al. (2015) Zero-Carbon Cloud: High-value, Dispatchable Demand for Renewable Power Generators. Electricity Journal .
[47]	48.Yang F, Chien A A (2017) Extreme scaling of supercomputing with stranded power: Costs and capabilities. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems .
[48]	49.International Renewable Energy Agency (2015) Renewables and electricity storage: A technology roadmap for remap 2030. Tech. rep., IRENA. https://www.irena.org/DocumentDownloads/ Publications/IRENA_REmap_Electricity_Storage_2015.pdf.
[49]	50.Barnhart C, Dale M, Brandt A, et al. (2013) The energetic implications of curtailing versus storing solar- and wind-generated electricity. Energy and Environmental Science 6. DOI:10.1039/c3ee41973h.

Reader Comments

Your name:*

Email:*
© 2018 the Author(s), licensee AIMS Press. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)