2020/12/22 by Lina Reichenberg, Reichenberg, Lina, Fredrik Hedenus +5 · 1 citation
Energy · Engineering · #Electric Power System Optimization #FOS: Physical sciences #Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems #Integrated Energy Systems Optimization #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2012.12365
openalex publication_date 2020/12/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Long distance transmission within continents has been shown to be one of the\nmost important variation management strategies in renewable energy systems,\nwhere allowing for transmission expansion will reduce system cost by around\n20%. In this paper, we test whether the system cost further decreases when\ntransmission is extended to intercontinental connections. We analyze a Eurasian\ninterconnection between China, Mid-Asia and Europe, using a capacity expansion\nmodel with hourly time resolution. The model is constrained by an increasingly\ntighter global cap on CO2 emissions in order to investigate the effect of\ndifferent levels of reliance on variable sources. Our results show that a\nsupergrid option decreases total system cost by a maximum of 5%, compared to\ncontinental grid integration. This maximum effect is achieved when (i) the\ngeneration is constrained to be made up almost entirely by renewables, (ii) the\nland available for VRE farms is relatively limited and the demand is relatively\nhigh and (iii) the cost for solar PV and storage is high. The importance of\nthese two factors is explained by that a super grid allows for harnessing of\nremote wind-, solar- and hydro resources as well as management of variations,\nboth of which are consequential only in cases where dispatchable resources are\nlimited or very costly. As for the importance of the cost for storage, it\nrepresents a competing variation management option, and when it has low cost,\nit substitutes part of the role of the supergrid, which is to manage variations\nthrough long-distance trade. The cost decrease from a Eurasian supergrid was\nfound to be between 0% and 5%, compared to the cost in the case of\ncontinental-scale grids. We conclude that the benefits of a supergrid from a\ntechno-economic perspective are in most cases negligible, or modest at best.17\npages, f\n