Powering the Future Summary Report - Parsons Brinckerhoff

Powering the Future Summary Report
Powering the Future Summary Report
limitations on the rate of construction are profound and
are difficult to change quickly.
The electricity sector is unusual in that it has minimal
inherent energy consumption, unlike the other
sectors, but instead must meet the demands of the
other sectors for electrical energy. In matching these
demands in each scenario, the mix of new generating
capacity is selected to maintain a reliable electricity
supply with minimum CO 2 emissions to 2050, ensuring
that there is sufficient capacity to meet the aggregated
peak demand of the sectors. The plant mix also allows
for the intermittency of many renewable sources, while
recognising that each plant type must have sufficient
utilisation for new investment to be viable. The
matching of capacity with demand is illustrated for the
reference scenario in figure 12.
Powering the Future addresses the specific issue of
how to integrate into the electricity supply system the
large amounts of wind capacity likely to be required
to meet the EU Renewables Directive. The inherent
variability of wind generation needs to be corrected
by other forms of generation to maintain a reliable
continuous supply to consumers. Building on work
which evaluated the hour-by-hour generation of 25 GW
of wind capacity widely distributed across the UK 15 ,
we created a model to assess the ability of the UK
electricity system to handle the predicted variations in
power caused by increasing scales of wind capacity.
The results show that the current mix of generating
plant will be unable to ensure reliable electricity
supply with significantly more than 10 GW of wind
capacity. For larger wind capacity to be managed
successfully, up to 10 GW of fast-response generating
plant or controllable load will be needed to balance
the electricity system. Electricity interconnection with
mainland Europe would offer some fast-response
capability, but would be unlikely to offer predictable
support. Without additional fast-response balancing
facilities, significant numbers of UK electricity
consumers could regularly experience interruptions or
a drop in voltage.
If a large wind contribution is introduced early in the
period, then significant fast-response generating
capacity must also be installed. Later in the period,
there is a synergy with the large controllable demands
of vehicle battery charging, so that very little additional
balancing capacity would be required.
Table 5 Potential major power plant types for installation in the UK to 2050
Figure 11 Forward capacity of existing and committed plant 14
14
Derived from: Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, ‘DUKES Table 5.11: Power Stations in the United
Kingdom (operational at the end of May 2008)’ 2008 and National Grid Company, ‘Transmission Entry Capacity (TEC) Data’ 2008.
15
Oswald J, Raine M, Ashraf-Ball H, ‘Will British Weather Provide Reliable Electricity?’ 2008.
31:32