<p>Wind and solar generation are
intermittent generation sources. System integration costs include the costs of
spinning reserves, increased transmission costs and storage costs. The
overarching research problem examines evaluation of different policies that
lead to high penetration of intermittent renewable electricity sources. The
first research question examined the emissions reduction benefits and system
integration costs of policy mandates for high penetration of intermittent
renewable electricity technologies for Midcontinent Independent System Operator
(MISO). The second research question
examines the total systems costs of mandates for renewable electricity
generation and a carbon tax using a TIMES model for MISO. The third research
question examined the emissions and costs of policy mandates for high penetration
of wind and solar electricity generation technologies for MISO when short-term
operational constraints are considered. TIMES minimizes the total system cost
subject to constraints of capacity activity, commodity use, satisfying demand,
and peaking reserve. The US EPA 9 region model contains end use technologies
for commercial, industrial, residential and transport sectors. The technologies
that do not serve end use demands with electricity have been removed. The
number of time slices which are the time divisions of the year was increased to
288 to help capture wind and solar generation dynamics at higher levels of
penetration and help better understand spinning reserves requirements and
costs. Based on the candidate sites for solar and wind generation, the costs
include expected transmission costs, and any investment and production costs
specific to the candidate sites costs.</p>
<p>The results show that as the
level of the mandate for wind and solar generation increases, their costs
increased. Emissions saving from the
mandates were converted to reductions in the Social Costs of Emissions (SCE)
(See Section 2.4.4 for the definition) to compare system cost to with the
savings in SCE. The savings in the SCE increase as the level of the mandate
increases. However, the savings in SCE do not justify the system cost increases
associated with the mandates. </p>
<p>The carbon tax and mandate
policies implemented held the overall emission reductions constant where a 35%
reduction of CO2e emissions from 2020 levels by 2050 in compared to the
reference scenario. The carbon tax (Policy I) had the lower of Levelized
Marginal Cost of Electricity (LMCOE) (discounted value of generation for a year
based on the generation weighted Marginal Cost of Electricity), while the
mandate (Policy II) had the higher of LMCOE. Similarly, Policy I had the lowest
of discounted total system cost and Policy II had higher discounted total
system cost. </p>
<p>The cost to society is
underestimated when short-term operational constraints are ignored. The addition
of short-term operational constraints led to increased total systems cost and
greater emissions savings as the level of the mandate increased. Adding
short-term operating constraints also gives a more complete understating of
CO2e emissions savings for the different scenarios as there is a decrease in
coal generation and increase in natural gas generation led to increased CO2e
emissions savings. The addition of short-term operational constraints shows on
one hand the impact of the policy and on the other hand the consequences of not
including some of the cost realities.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:purdue.edu/oai:figshare.com:article/12692069 |
| Date | 23 July 2020 |
| Creators | Nisal Dinupa Herath (9155576) |
| Source Sets | Purdue University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis |
| Rights | CC BY 4.0 |
| Relation | https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/Evaluating_High_Penetration_of_Intermittent_Renewable_Electricity_Policies/12692069 |
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