United States is rich in renewable energy. Renewable energy is a big topic to talk
about, including how to well use these energy to save the world. Today I will focus on
How much electricity can renewable energy contribute to the power system. In the recent
year, Renewable energy installations are growing rapidly, especially wind power and
photovoltaic power generation. But how the power system consume a higher proportion
of the intermittent power? And if there a synergy between different types of renewable
energy? If we Integrating the renewable energy in a larger area, how well it can help the
power consumption?
By the lead of the Massachusetts institute of technology( M.I.T.)and U.S. renewable
energy laboratory, the U.S. department of energy laboratories, industry, university and
government departments participated and complete the “Renewable electricity future
study”. In the study, they analyzed with two models, which are “ Regional Energy
Deployment System Model” and “ GridView Model”. This paper focuses on the
influence of different generation ratio of renewable energy sources on power structure
and transmission facilities, and also analyze the sequence when renewable energy take up
80% of the overall power generation. This study has great use of reference for the
development of renewable energy in the United States and other countries.
The development of renewable energy in the United States is constrained by many
factors, including policy and institutional constraints, technological development level,
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3033218606
Julie Nguyen
ESPM 50AC
Final Project
market drivers and so on. It is difficult to accurately estimate the development of
renewable energy in the future. So in the “Renewable electricity future study”, a dozen
scenarios are analyzed. Considering there is a big chance that the proportion of renewable
energy power generation take up to 80 percent of the power generation in the future, the
paper does analysis under different scenario includes technology develop level, resource
supply level and so on. Here is some detail of the assumption: First of all, Energy
efficiency improves, and power demand growth is slowing down; second, improvements
in renewable energy sources and performance, and it relates to current federal and state
policies; third, the policy formulation of renewable energy is mainly restricted by existing
laws; forth, the carbon emission reduction policies are not implemented, and air pollution
regulations are the same as the current situation. In this scenario, conventional power
sources develop rapidly and renewable energy is slow to develop. The demand for
electricity relates to two factors: population growth and economic development. In the
low-demand hypothesis, new technologies, positive social attitudes and related policies
are the reason why energy efficiency have promoted. In this scenario, electricity demand
will grow more slowly in the coming decades, and the demand of electricity is about 3.92
trillion kilowatt-hours in 2050. But in high demand assumptions with the energy
efficiency at current levels, leading to a demand for electricity of 5.1 trillion kilowatthours
in 2050. After all, the portion of renewable energy that can contribute in the power
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Julie Nguyen
ESPM 50AC
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generation direct affect the future of it, and different scenario of collaboration of politics
and technology can lead to a different outcome.
The factor can affect the future of renewable energy is not only technology, but also
policy. To have a better understand of the future of clean energy, let’s take a peek of the
current clean energy policy. The current green energy policy is “ American Clean Energy
and Security Act”, as known as ACESA. On June 26, 2009, the house of representatives
passed the law by a narrow margin of 219 to 212. The bill contains more than have more
than 1,400 pages of text, including five parts, which are clean energy, energy efficiency,
reducing greenhouse gas emissions, transition to clean energy economy and agriculture
and forestry. In the part of clean energy, this law required the generation enterprise which
quantity sold more than 4 billion kW · h power need for developing in renewable energy
generation and energy efficiency to meet the requirements of part of the electric power
growth. In other word, by the end of 2020, renewable energy source (without water
electricity) power generation will take up to 20 percent of total capacity, which is 14
percent more than the number in 2012. However, “Renewable electricity future study”
conducted a different conclusion from the ACESA. It uses multiple scenario analysis to
show us the policy doesn’t support enough for the development of the clean energy. Even
under a low-demand core situation, the growth of Renewable energy power generation
increase will only from 12% to 19.5% , from 2010 to 2050.
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Julie Nguyen
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In technology wise, knowing the power source structure is important. When the
proportion of renewable energy increases in power generation, the energy source portion
relatively change as well, as showing in Graph 1. A few outstanding changing
components are: when renewable energy take up from 30 percent to 90 percent of the
total energy generation, the onshore wind power has the largest expanded, which
increases from 130 million kilowatt to 400 million kilowatt, of course the offshore wind
power has expended as well, which is up to 110 million kilowatt; concentrating solar
power has the ability of saving heat, it has big influence on the flexibility of power grind,
up to 2050, concentrating solar power capacity grows from couple thousand kilowatt to
120 million kilowatt; with the coal-fired unit retires in 2050, biomass change from
mixed-fuel burning to direct fuel burning; nuclear capability doesn’t have a big change,
but power generating drop from about 11 percent to 5 percent. And the more detail
changes have shown on the graph 1 below.
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*Graph 1
In 2050, the chance of renewable energy takes up 80% of the power generation is
pretty big. However, it must be facing a lot of uncertainties in the developing phase. So
simulate the result by assuming different uncertainties scenarios become very important
for strategic analyzing, for example technology developed level, constraint on power
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transmission, constraint on flexibility of power grid or constraint on resources supply. In
the “Renewable electricity future study”, under the low-demand core 80 percent RE
scenario, the analysis for different constraint conditions was conducted. The detail will be
shown on graph 2. In 80 percent RE-NTI(Renewable Electricity—No Technology
Improvement), 80 percent RE-ITI (Renewable Electricity—Incremental Technology
Improvement) and 80 percent RE-ETI(Renewable Electricity—Evolutionary Technology
Improvement) these three scenario favored more on the technology that currently it is on
an early stage, which most likely is solar power, especially CSP.
In the 80 percent RE-ETI scenario, the growth of CSP was found to be particularly
sensitive to scenario design, which yield the highest level of capability deployment, up to
130GW. Comparing to other scenarios, the technology that is mature today seems to be
less deploying in the future, especially hydropower and wind power, they only hit the
number respectively 81GW and 390GW. In the 80 percent RE-NTI scenario it relies on
the current advanced technology, so on the opposite of RE-ETI, the wind and
hydropower deployment has the largest scale, respectively up to 560GW and 170GW. Of
course, the low level of deployment were witness for CSP capability and utility-scale PV
capability, respectively only about 1GW and 5GW.
In the scenario of transmission constrained, because of the constraint on the newbuilt
facilities, the renewable energies that not rely on transmission were assumed to have
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a great development, which including rooftop PV, offshore wind and biomass. The level
of deployment for rooftop PV is 180GW, for offshore wind is 170GW and for biomass is
98GW. In scale of contribution, it’s 15 percent, 16 percent and 10 percent. On the
contrary, the generating technologies that reply more on transmission were imposed
constriction on developing. The low level of deployment is observed in CSP and onshore
wind power, their contribution is only 33GW, 28GW, respectively.
In the scenario of flexibility constrained, the larger deployment of storage
technologies are observed, such as CSP with thermal storage is deployed at high levels
with 89GW in order to adapt the flexibility constraint condition. On the contrary, the
utility-scale PV and wind power are in the relatively modest deployment levels, which is
64GW and 420GW, respectively
In the scenario of resources constrained, because of the restriction of the location
selection and the permission procedures, the low development of biomass, geothermal
and hydropower are observed. However, the resources that spread all over the place have
a rapid expansion, such as CSP and onshore wind power. In 2050, the deployment of CSP
and onshore wind power reach 120GW and 40GW, respectively. On the contrary, the
deployment of biomass, geothermal and hydropower are only 5.2GW, 1.2GW and
10.4GW, respectively.
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Graph 2
Of course, when The change in energy efficiency and power consumption policy is not
obviously improving, it may lead to a substantial increase in the power demand in the future.
For this reason, “Renewable electricity future study” carried out the scenario analysis of
high-demand core 80 percent renewable energy as well. Comparing to the low-demand
core 80 percent RE scenario (including 80 percent RE-NTI, 80 percent RE-ITI, 80 percent
RE-ETI, resource constraints, transmission constraints and flexible constraint scenario),
the total installation increased from 127GW ~ 147 GW to 193GW. Among all the scenarios,
photovoltaic and offshore wind rise significantly, installed capability reach 420GW and
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ESPM 50AC
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460GW, respectively. On the contrary, due to resource constraints, the proportion of water
energy, biomass energy and geothermal energy are reduced.
In conclusion, the abuse of the fossil fuel is getting more and more obvious, such as
issues of the safety fossil energy, price of resources, storage of the resource, the effect on
climate change, pollution and social issue. These all account for the constraint of fossil
fuel. Accelerating the development of renewable energy has become an important choice
for the energy strategies of all countries. In recent years, countries have launched a boom
in renewable energy. However, it is difficult to accurately assess the impact of the future
renewable energy development on the premise that the policy system, technological
development level and market drivers are uncertain. So in the “Renewable electricity future
study”, a series of situational analysis is conducted on various factors, which has an
important impact on the development of renewable energy in the United States and the
world. In order to raise the proportion of renewable energy power generation, the cooperate
of the power source structure, transmission facilities, relevant policy government, financial
support, etc. Every loop plays an unreplaceable role in this chain to the future. At the
meantime, in the process of renewable energy development, it is important to balance the
relationship between development scale and technology progress, social impact,
environmental protection and market regulation and other aspects.
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Julie Nguyen
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Work Cited:
Rausch, Sebastian, and Matthew Mowers. Distributional and Efficiency Impacts of
Clean and Renewable Energy Standards for Electricity. MIT Joint Program on the
Science and Policy of Global Change, 2012.
National Renewable Energy Laboratory. (2012). Renewable Electricity Futures
Study. Hand, M.M.; Baldwin, S.; DeMeo, E.; Reilly, J.M.; Mai, T.; Arent, D.; Porro, G.;
Meshek, M.; Sandor, D. eds. 4 vols. NREL/TP-6A20-52409. Golden, CO: National
Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Waxman, Henry. “H.R.2454 – 111th Congress (2009-2010): American Clean Energy
and Security Act of 2009.” Congress.gov, 7 July 2009, www.congress.gov/bill/111thcongress/
house-bill/2454.