IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/energy/v106y2016icp147-161.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Variability of wind and solar power – An assessment of the current situation in the European Union based on the year 2014

Author

Listed:
  • Buttler, Alexander
  • Dinkel, Felix
  • Franz, Simon
  • Spliethoff, Hartmut

Abstract

The growth of wind and solar power in the EU (European Union) poses several challenges for its integration in the electricity system like short-term balancing, back-up power and overproduction. The present study quantifies the current variations and production characteristics of wind and solar power based on measured time series of the year 2014, collected from the EU transmission system operators. The data is covering 90.1% of wind power production and 86.0% of solar power production with a time resolution of 15 min in most cases. A significant smoothing effect due to geographical spreading is observed for wind power production in the EU with a base-load share of 4% of installed capacity and even 9% during winter season. Wind power shows high peak values of short-term variations on a national level while on an EU level, variations are below ±3% of installed capacity per 15 min. The maximum coverage of load by wind and solar power was 32% for the EU while in Denmark overproduction already occurred with a temporal share of 119% of load.

Suggested Citation

  • Buttler, Alexander & Dinkel, Felix & Franz, Simon & Spliethoff, Hartmut, 2016. "Variability of wind and solar power – An assessment of the current situation in the European Union based on the year 2014," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 147-161.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:106:y:2016:i:c:p:147-161
    DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2016.03.041
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544216302857
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.energy.2016.03.041?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:106:y:2016:i:c:p:147-161. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/energy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.