Hourly Matching of renewable electricity production with demand of large-scale electricity consumers

Abstract

This research aims to provide a method for large-scale commercial electricity consumers to procure towards 100% hourly matched renewable electricity. A problem with the current electricity balancing system is that the energy produced by Variable Renewable Energy sources (VRES), such as wind and solar PV, has a weather-dependent production profile and is thus non-controllable and intermittent. The balance between the total energy demand of the large-scale electricity (LSE) consumer and the production of electricity from VRES in their contract is only based on a yearly scale and not on an hourly scale. At moments when there is little wind, mainly coal & gas- powered plants need to be dispatched to secure uninterrupted power supply.
Procurement of renewable energy is realized with the use of Guarantees of origin (GOs). GOs are an instrument that tracks the origin of electricity generated from renewable resources on a yearly basis but does not differentiate in hourly production profile. Therefore, this system will not be able to address the challenge of balancing VRES and demand on an hourly scale. In the future, with the ambition of moving towards substantially higher proportion of RES, the balancing on hourly base is needed to decrease the dependency on the conventional plants as backup. Therefore, with the current setup with yearly tracked RES, companies are limited in their role in the energy transition. This research aims to provide a novel method for large-scale commercial electricity consumers to procure towards 100% hourly matched renewable electricity.
In this thesis, a techno-economic analysis was conducted to examine possible hourly-matched renewable energy portfolio for Dutch LSE consumers. First, an analysis was conducted of the production and storage technologies that could potentially be used for the application of hourly matching. Secondly, a methodology was developed to analyse the match between an LSE consumer’s demand and the production profile. The degree to which these profiles are matched was defined as the green score. The higher the green score, the higher the percentage of the demand that is covered by the portfolio on an hourly base. The demand profile is kept consistent, and a comparison is made of scenarios of different portfolios containing production and storage technologies. Third, using a Levelised Cost of Portfolio (LCOP) the cost per MWh for the whole portfolio is compared for different scenario’s.
This study shows that the hourly match measured using the percentage green score can be significantly increased by adapting the LSE consumer portfolio, however a 100% hourly match is not shown. Much of the research to date has focused on national-scale scenarios, but only provides limited incentives and insights into the role that large companies can play.
This study provides a tool which is suitable to perform a techno-economic analysis to increase the hourly match of LSE consumers using various electricity production and electrical energy storage technologies. The insights found on the impact of different combinations of technologies in a portfolio can be used to understand a further possible role of these companies in the energy transition.