Using Resource Based Slicing to Capture the Intermittency of Variable Renewables

Preprint, 2016

As the share of variable renewables – wind and solar PV – is expected to grow significantly in coming decades, it has become increasingly important to account for their intermittency in large scale energy models that are used to explore long term energy futures. In this paper we propose and evaluate one method for doing so, namely, resource based slicing. In addition we implement storage based on possible transitions between slices which allows us to explore new dynamics between intermittent generation and electricity storage in large scale models. Our preliminary results show that this approach manages to capture many aspects introduced by variable renewables such as need for flexible generation capacity and curtailment at high penetration levels. We show that adding electricity storage to the system will favour solar power but has only a minor effect on wind and nuclear power.