Renewable energy and transmission networks

Abstract

Achieving the integration of large amounts of Renewable Energy will certainly impact the development and operation of the transmission network. Making efficient use of Renewable Energy primary resources within a large region will require the transportation over long distances of large amounts of energy and will lead to less predictability and more stress in the use of the transmission network to cope with the intermittency and variability of such generation resources. This chapter identifies and discusses the main impacts related to the existence of renewable generation on those aspects of the functioning of the system that are related to the transmission grid. Expansion planning may probably need to take place in an integrated manner at regional level; while long-term transmission rights will need to be somehow accounted for in the planning process; these rights will have to be made available to Renewable Energy based generation; changes in electricity transmission technology may be necessary; markets will probably need to move closer to real time to better address imbalances caused by Renewable Energy generation; and the number of connection requests will probably increase, at least in those areas with abundant renewable primary resources; these resources may need to be provided priority access to the grid; finally, due to the inability to appropriately predict network use, transmission tariffs computed ex-ante will be less efficient, since they will be less likely to reflect future system conditions; on the other hand, updating network charges periodically defeats their main purpose of sending credible locational signals to prospective investors.