Video: Prospects and Challenges for High Penetration of Renewable Energy (external link)
Can renewables become the dominant source of electricity in Canada and the USA?
On September 24th & 25th, 2014, TISED and Institut de l’énergie Trottier (IET) at Polytechnique Montréal co-hosted events on exploring the potential for renewable energy penetration in Canada and the USA.
Speaker: John Reilly
Abstract:
Renewables electricity sources are a seemingly attractive low-carbon option to substitute for coal or gas generation. Regional availability of high quality wind and solar resources varies, but at least in the United States, most regions have significant resources. Expanding the options to biomass, hydroelectricity, and geothermal creates greater opportunities. A recent NREL led study concluded that high penetration renewable scenarios were technically feasible, and while the cost of electricity was higher than today it was not out of line with other estimates the electricity price impacts of reducing US carbon emissions. The cost per MWhr of installed capacity of wind and solar have come down substantially in recent years, and further reductions are foreseen. The bigger challenge with intermittent renewables is matching an intermittent and uncertain supply with load. to some extent the supply of solar and wind vary in complementary ways, biomass, hydro, and geothermal offer the possibility altering dispatch, and options exist for energy storage. Further grid integration and additional transmission can also play a role one evening out supply and demand by taking advantage of geographic anti-correlation. While those options were all considered, back-up fossil generation capacity also played a substantial role. The study addressed grid integration issues while highlighting the need for further investigation of the details of grid management with dispersed and variable renewable resources.