Challenges for Conventional Power Plants at High Shares of Variable Renewable Energy

Inhalt:
With increasing shares of weather-dependent feed-in from wind and solar generation, the role of conventional generation is changing. The demand for flexible conventional power plants that can ramp up and down quickly to balance fluctuating wind and PV generation increases, while the capacity factors of conventional generation decrease. Cycling and load-following operations will be much more frequent even for power plants that were originally designed for baseload only. This paper focuses on the demand for conventional generation in a scenario with a target share1 of 40 % renewable energy from biomass, wind and PV and a further 17 % from hydro generation in the European grid in 2020. The resulting challenges for future power plant operation are examined, as well as the influence of power plant flexibility on VRE curtailment compared with the influence of grid expansions.