Renew Extra Weekly

Renewables are doing well, supplying over 35% of the EUs electricity, with that expected to rise to 57 % by 2030 .   Continued expansion beyond that looks likely,   in the EU and elsewhere-   some say to near 100% of power, or even of all energy, is possible by 2050.   However, as renewables spread, the existing energy market trading system may no longer be helpful. Globally and regionally it was dominated in the past by coal, then oil and more recently gas, physical commodities, shifted by rail, tanker, truck or (for the fluids) by pipe, with control over access to these resources having major geopolitical implications. Electricity has also been traded nationally, and increasingly regionally e.g. around the EU, and, with renewables expanding, that trade could grow. In part that is because renewable resources are very different from fossil resources. The latter are concentrated in a few geographical locations, the former are more dispersed and so, often, is powe...

A new study of the potential for variable renewable energy (VRE) in China says that it is vast, nearly 20 TW, and that, far from adding to the problem of grid balancing, as more of both wind and PV solar   is installed over a wider area, they were mutually supporting. There was a ‘complementarity between wind and solar in China, reflected in more optimal return-volatility performance of wind & solar portfolios, as compared to wind-only and solar-only portfolios’. And expanding both made it easier to deal with their variability: ‘F or the same total installed capacity, wind & solar portfolios with unconstrained technology shares exhibit better return-volatility performance than portfolios with constrained technology shares. This suggests that existing scenarios in literature with pre-defined shares of different VRE technologies might be sub-optimal to support power system operation’.               ...