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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Hannah BloomfieldORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Meeting carbon-reduction targets will require thorough consideration of climate variability and climate change due to the increasing share of climate-sensitive renewable energy sources (RES). One of the main concerns arises from situations of low renewable production and high demand, which can hinder the power system. We analysed energy droughts, defined as periods of low energy production (wind plus solar generation) or high residual load (demand minus production), in terms of two main properties: duration and severity. We estimated the joint return periods associated with energy droughts of residual load and power production. We showed that moderate winter energy droughts of both low renewable production and high residual load occur every half a year, while summer events occur every 3.6 and 2.4 years (on average). As expected, the occurrence of energy droughts tends to decrease with the degree of the severity of the energy drought, and moderate and extreme energy droughts showed longer return periods for most countries. In general, we found a large variability across Europe in summer, with some countries (e.g. Italy) being more sensitive to energy droughts. Our results highlight the relevance of sharing RES during prolonged periods of low production and high demand.
Author(s): Otero N, Martius O, Allen S, Bloomfield HC, Schaefli B
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Renewable Energy
Year: 2022
Volume: 201
Issue: 1
Pages: 667-677
Print publication date: 01/12/2022
Online publication date: 02/11/2022
Acceptance date: 17/10/2022
Date deposited: 23/11/2023
ISSN (print): 0960-1481
ISSN (electronic): 1879-0682
Publisher: Elsevier Ltd
URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2022.10.091
DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2022.10.091
Data Access Statement: The time series of energy data used within this study are available from the Reading Research data repository:https://researchdata.reading.ac.uk/227. The code is available upon request to the corresponding author.
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