A new report from the USA’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) states increased cycling of fossil fuel base power stations to take into account fluctuating renewable energy input makes solid economic sense.
Cycling is a normal part of coal and gas fired power generation in order to meet varying levels of demand and other conditions. However, with so much in the way of wind and solar panels now being connected to the mains grid; cycling will become more frequent. With this comes a concern of increased maintenance costs, carbon emissions and fuel consumption.
The NREL’s Western Wind and Solar Integration Study Phase 2 study determined that carbon emissions produced by more frequent cycling are negligible. Sulfur dioxide emissions and emissions of nitrogen oxides are also reduced more than expected.
That’s all well and good for the tree-huggers, but what about the suits that only care about dollars and cents? There’s good news on this front as well.
The study also determined a high level of wind and solar power generation would reduce fossil fuel costs by approximately $7 billion per year across the West, while incurring cycling costs of just $35 million to $157 million per year; accrued due to an increase in operations and maintenance costs for fossil fuel plants.
“Increased cycling to accommodate high levels of wind and solar generation increases operating costs by 2% to 5% for the average fossil-fueled plant,” said Debra Lew, NREL project manager for the study.
“However, our simulations show that from a system perspective, avoided fuel costs are far greater than the increased cycling costs for fossil-fueled plants.”
NREL utilized the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Continuous Emissions Monitoring system data set in order to analyse hourly emissions from just about every fossil-fueled power station in the United States.
The Western Wind and Solar Integration Study can be viewed in full here.
