https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2014-02216-9
Regular Article
Emergence of a phase transition for the required amount of storage in highly renewable electricity systems
1 Department of Electrical Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Richard Petersens Plads 325, 2800 Kongens Lyngby, Denmark
2 Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 120, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
3 Department of Engineering and Department of Mathematics, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 118, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
a e-mail: tvjens@elektro.dtu.dk
b e-mail: greiner@eng.au.dk
Received: 26 April 2014
Revised: 14 May 2014
Published online: 24 June 2014
Due to global environmental concerns, our electricity supply will transform from mostly conventional power generation to mostly fluctuating renewable power generation. The transition will require combined backup from conventional sources and storage. A phase transition emerges during the ramp-up of the required amount of storage, with renewable penetration being the control parameter and average relative storage filling level being the order parameter. A singularity appears for the required storage energy capacity at a renewable penetration determined by the parameters of the storage. For an ideal storage with no roundtrip losses the transition occurs at 100% renewable penetration. Moreover, the required storage energy capacity is strongly enhanced by temporal correlations on the synoptic weather time scale. A Markov process is proposed, which reproduces these findings.
© EDP Sciences, Springer-Verlag, 2014
