A simple model: when capacity of solar and wind increase

In previous post, I described the particular dynamics in which electricity production from intermittent energy sources, when growing in capacity, will not increase much at the production valleys, but will steeply increase at the production peaks. This means that, when capacity increases, the needed backup capacity will stay high, even at multiples of the current capacity, but at the same time measures have to be taken to suppress the ever growing peaks.

I illustrated this with a (celebrated) record high of wind production on June 8, followed by a (neglected) low production (June 9). In less than 12 hours, the production fell from almost 3,000 MWh (capacity factor of 81%) to almost 20 MWh (capacity factor of 0.5%). This illustration was only for electricity production by wind energy. There is a complicating factor: solar is also an intermittent energy source and can intensify as well as dampen the effect of wind.

That made me wonder how this interaction would look like when capacity of solar and wind increases over time. In real-life, this is not witnessed yet, this is still to come. It is however possible to study the dynamics of such a system by modeling it.

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A new record for wind energy (during a storm)

A storm headed over our country at the end of last week. That inevitably means advocates of wind energy praising how wonderful wind energy is doing and how much electricity was produced by wind. That is exactly what happened and apparently we even have a new record…

It was Chris Derde (manager of energy provider Wase wind) who broke the news. He tweeted that wind energy had a “new record production of 3 GW” and that nuclear power plants lowered “their production by 0.5 GW”. This was one of the two images that accompanied the tweet, illustrating the record:

“Extends” or “could extend”, that is the question

This is the wrap-up of the vehicle-to-grid series. In this post, I will go back to the article bringing the news that vehicle-to-grid networks increase longevity of electric car batteries. Now that I read the paper and have shed some light on several aspects, I re-read the article to find out whether the author was correctly representing that paper.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. It already starts with the title (translated from Dutch, my emphasis):

‘Energy storage in electric car extends the lifespan of the battery’