A predictive pan-European economic and production dispatch model for the energy transition in the electricity sector

Abstract

The energy transition is well underway in most European countries. It has a growing impact on electric power systems as it dramatically modifies the way electricity is produced. To ensure a safe and smooth transition towards a pan-European electricity production dominated by renewable sources, it is of paramount importance to anticipate how production dispatches will evolve, to understand how increased fluctuations in power generations can be absorbed at the pan-European level and to evaluate where the resulting changes in power flows will require significant grid upgrades. To address these issues, we construct an aggregated model of the pan-European transmission network which we couple to an optimized, few-parameter dispatch algorithm to obtain time- and geographically-resolved production profiles. We demonstrate the validity of our dispatch algorithm by reproducing historical production time series for all power productions in fifteen different European countries. Having calibrated our model in this way, we investigate future production profiles at later stages of the energy transition - determined by planned future production capacities - and the resulting interregional power flows. We find that large power fluctuations from increasing penetrations of renewable sources can be absorbed at the pan-European level via significantly increased electricity exchanges between different countries. We identify where these increased exchanges will require additional power transfer capacities. We finally introduce a physically-based economic indicator which allows to predict future financial conditions in the electricity market. We anticipate new economic opportunities for dam hydroelectricity and pumped-storage plants.