BAKU, Azerbaijan, Jan.25
By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:
Increasing shares of variable renewable energy such as solar and wind will mean power systems need to become more flexible, Trend reports with reference to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
“At the same time, the traditional providers of this flexibility – mainly thermal power plants – will play a smaller role as decarbonization objectives require their reduced use. Variable renewable generators depend on the availability of the sun and wind, and thus require complementary technologies to ensure that the balance between supply and demand is maintained at all times,” IEA said in its latest report.
The agency notes that new technologies – in particular batteries and other energy storage, biomass, and thermal plants either with carbon capture and storage or burning clean fuels – will therefore play an increasing role to supply this flexibility.
“At the same time, growing use of electricity and new demand sources represent a huge opportunity to create a world where flexible demand is at least as important as flexible supply technologies,” said IEA.
The report says that such a system is going to look very different than today’s power sector, and these changes mean we need to alter how we plan for a secure electricity system.
“Our understanding of demand needs to be much more than just how peak demand evolves, and our understanding of supply needs to be much more than how much dispatchable capacity is installed and what is the risk of an outage during supply peaks. In short, it is not sufficient to look only at the system's ability to stay balanced during selected tight moments,” the agency believes.
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