As we shift towards more weather-dependent renewable energy sources, increased frequency of extreme weather events may have a negative impact on UK energy infrastructure, in terms of supply, demand and management. As such, we require a better understanding of the implications of extreme weather on the energy system.
This session will present recent mathematical science studies in this area and selected challenges from industry, which will be tackled in a virtual mathematical Study Group on 8 and 9 November 2021. Problems for these are in discussion but we hope to focus on industrial challenges in energy systems arising from extreme weather events.
This online session is curated by KTN (as part of V-KEMS) and the Bath Institute for Mathematical Innovation.
Please register here.
Challenge One: Wave Energy Converter Integration with Wind Farms
Company: Mocean Energy
Presenter: Chris Retzler
Mocean Energy is an Edinburgh-based company developing a novel wave energy converter (WEC), which converts energy in ocean waves into electricity. Unlike wind turbines, which need to be shut down in wind speeds that are too high, Mocean’s WECs have design features that allow them not only to survive extreme storms but to continue to generate power.
Therefore, in a future scenario with a lot of grid-connected offshore wind capacity, it seems plausible that these types of WECs might be able to, at least partly, cover the downtime of wind turbines during extreme weather / storm events, by continuing to operate. However, even with a wave energy technology that can generate power when wind turbines cannot, some questions remain around the weather and the grid operation that may be fruitful for investigation here. For example:
- Is there a sufficient level of correlation between the relevant wind and wave parameters during typical storm events, and is this location-dependent?
- To what degree could wave energy help to address the risks that large amounts of offshore wind pose to the operation of the National Grid? What sort of installed capacity would be required to provide clear benefits to the grid?
These types of questions relating to the weather and the grid could also go some way to addressing the question of whether it would ultimately be better to deploy our type of WECs within or very near to a wind farm, or as a completely separate development.
Challenge Two: Flexibility for Future Electric Heating
Company: KrakenFlex
Presenter: Nick Good
KrakenFlex enables the worlds largest asset owners, energy traders and electricity retailers to control their Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) in real-time, monitoring both physical and financial performance. KrakenFlex would be interested to explore the challenge of flexibility for electric heating. Specifically;
- given a maximum electricity import limit, how much thermal storage would be required for a house to maintain thermal comfort in different locations given a 1-in-5/10/20/100-year temperature lows?
- if flexibility is provided by a back-up gas boiler, how much CO2 would be emitted given 1-in-5/10/20/100-year temperature lows?
Challenge Three: Energy supply solutions during extreme weather events
Company: National Grid
Presenter: Jonathan Barcroft
National Grid ESO is responsible for reliable, secure system operation to deliver electricity when customers need it. We make sure that Great Britain has the essential energy it needs by ensuring supply meets demand every second of every day.
We are interested to explore how we can reflect the uncertainty in future weather patterns in our system modelling. In particular how could we:
- ensure our long term planning (->2050) methodologies align to best available climate science
- represent the effect of different extreme weather events and return rates in our assessments
- compare uncertainties, caused by input data, with those from other modelling assumptions e.g. EV or electrified heat usage patterns
- consider the effect of future climate on international power flows and generation availability with increased interconnection