The paper ‘Challenges and Approaches to Electricity Grids Operations and Planning with Increased Amounts of Variable Renewable Generation: Emerging Lessons from Selected Operational Experiences and Desktop Studies’ focuses on analyzing the impacts of variable renewable energy on the operation and planning of the the power system (mostly, generation system). It is aimed at informing stakeholders in power utilities, regulatory bodies and other relevant audiences, on the fundamentals of technical challenges and approaches to operate electricity grids with renewable energy. It covers renewable energy as a whole, but in particular, focusses on wind and solar energy. It also presents three case studies of countries, including China, Gemany and Spain. The total worldwide installed capacity of wind and solar projects is growing rapidly, and several countries are noticing increased penetrations of wind and solar in their electricity generation mix. In addition to operating experience being gained from adding wind and solar capacity, several grid integration studies have been performed that assess potential grid and operating impacts from adding higher amounts of wind and solar capacity. Perhaps just as important, the electric power industry and those that conduct research on grid integration have not found a maximum level of variable generation that can be reliably incorporated, and it is clear that it is as much an economic question (how much cost in additional reserves or grid impacts is acceptable) as a technical question regarding grid operators’ ability to adapt to the new challenges. In addition, while their contributions to capacity or “firm” power and associated costs are different from those of conventional power sources, variable renewable generation technologies can contribute to long-term system adequacy and security. The paper describes on the contribution of variable power sources to long-term supply adequacy requirements, i.e. how much sources like wind and solar power contribute to “firm supply” in a system. It also describes methods to find out to what extent they contribute and at what cost. It also aims at providing indicative answers to how costs to system operations be determined and when and how an integration study be done to estimate the short-term reserve costs of renewable energy. The concepts in the paper should be of interest, especially to grid planers. For grid operators, the paper summarizes a menu of strategies that the operational practices and desktop research tell about managing wind in a system at different levels of penetration. It also elucidates available strategies, amongst other crucial questions of operational impacts and challenges that operators need to be aware of, to integrate variable generation.

The paper Challenges and Approaches to Electricity Grids Operations and Planning with Increased Amounts of Variable Renewable Generation: Emerging Lessons from Selected Operational Experiences and Desktop Studies focuses on analyzing the impacts of variable renewable energy on the operation and planning

The integration of renewable energy resources into the electricity grid presents an important challenge. This book provides a review and analysis of the technical and policy options available for managing variable energy resources such as wind and solar power. As well as being of value to government and industry policy-makers and planners, the volume also provides a single source for scientists and engineers of the technical knowledge gained during the 4-year RenewElec (renewable electricity) project at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Vermont, Vermont Law School, and the Van Ness Feldman environmental law firm. The first part of the book discusses the options for large scale integration of variable electric power generation, including issues of predictability, variability, and efficiency. The second part presents the scientific findings of the project. In the final part, the authors undertake a critical review of major quantitative regional and national wind integration studies in the United States. Based on comparisons among these studies, they suggest areas where improvements in methods are warranted in future studies, areas where additional research is needed to facilitate future improvements in wind integration studies and how the research can be put into practice.

International experiences with power sector restructuring and the resultant impacts on bulk power grid operations and planning may provide insight into policy questions for the evolving United States power grid as the electric power systems around the world are responding to a multitude of factors including changing resource mixes and fuel prices, an aging generation fleet with potentially large retirements of baseload generation and numerous policies designed to meet climate goals. Australia, Germany, Japan and the UK were selected to represent a range in the attributes of electricity industry liberalization in order to draw comparisons across a variety of regions in the United States such as California, ERCOT, the Southwest Power Pool and the Southeast Reliability Region. The study draws conclusions through a literature review of the four case study countries with regards to the changing resource mix and the electricity industry sector structure and their impact on grid operations and planning. This paper derives lessons learned and synthesizes implications for the United States based on the challenges faced by the four selected countries. Each country was examined to determine the challenges to their bulk power sector based on their changing resource mix, market structure, policies driving the changing resource mix, and policies driving restructuring. Each country's approach to solving those challenges was examined, as well as how each country's market structure either exacerbated or mitigated the approaches to solving the challenges to their bulk power grid operations and planning. All countries' policies encourage renewable energy generation. To date, relatively high levels of variable renewable generation have been incorporated with few challenges. However, one significant finding included the Low/zero fuel cost of variable renewables and its potential negative impact on long-term resource adequacy. No dominant solution has emerged although a capacity market was introduced in the UK and is being contemplated in Japan. Germany has proposed the Energy Market 2.0 to encourage flexible generation investment. In Australia interconnections to other regions provide added opportunities for balancing that would not be available otherwise, and at this point, has allowed for integration of renewables.

Renewable Energy Integration is a ground-breaking new resource - the first to offer a distilled examination of the intricacies of integrating renewables into the power grid and electricity markets. It offers informed perspectives from internationally renowned experts on the challenges to be met and solutions based on demonstrated best practices developed by operators around the world. The book's focus on practical implementation of strategies provides real-world context for theoretical underpinnings and the development of supporting policy frameworks. The book considers a myriad of wind, solar, wave and tidal integration issues, thus ensuring that grid operators with low or high penetration of renewable generation can leverage the victories achieved by their peers. Renewable Energy Integration highlights, carefully explains, and illustrates the benefits of advanced technologies and systems for coping with variability, uncertainty, and flexibility. - Lays out the key issues around the integration of renewables into power grids and markets, from the intricacies of operational and planning considerations, to supporting regulatory and policy frameworks - Provides global case studies that highlight the challenges of renewables integration and present field-tested solutions - Illustrates enabling and disruptive technologies to support the management of variability, uncertainty and flexibility

Many countries, reflecting very different geographies, markets, and power systems, are successfully managing high levels of variable renewable energy on the electric grid, including that from wind and solar energy. This book documents the diverse approaches to effective integration of variable renewable energy among six countries: Australia (South Australia), Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Spain, and the United States (Colorado and Texas), and summarises policy best practices that energy ministers and other stakeholders can pursue to ensure that electricity markets and power systems can effectively co-evolve with increasing penetrations of variable renewable energy. There is no one-size fits all approach; each country has crafted its own combination of policies, market designs, and system operations to achieve the system reliability and flexibility needed to successfully integrate renewables. Notwithstanding this diversity, the approaches all coalesce around five strategic areas: lead public engagement, particularly for new transmission; co-ordinate and integrate planning; develop rules for market evolution that enable system flexibility; expand access to diverse resources and geographic footprint of operations; and improve system operations. This book also underscores the value of countries sharing their experiences. The more diverse and robust the experience base from which a country can draw, the more likely that it will be able to implement an appropriate, optimised, and system-wide approach.