Teaching the "Duck" to Fly - Second Edition
The electric sector has become very sensitive to the load shape of emerging utility requirements, as increasing penetration of wind and solar energy creates challenging ramping issues for conventional generation in the morning and evening when renewable energy supplies wax and wane. Fundamentally, this issue is no different from the problem utilities have addressed for over a century—adapting the supply of energy to match changing consumer demand. The difference is that daily and seasonal usage patterns and the resources that have historically served that pattern have evolved gradually over the last 125 years, whereas the renewable energy revolution is creating new challenges in a much shorter period of time. Addressing this problem will require a change in the way utility power supply portfolios are formulated, but solutions are at hand. Fortunately, we have technologies available to us that our great-grandparents did not. This paper attempts to model the options for a hypothetical, illustrative electric utility facing its own duck curve.
Jim Lazar confirms that electric grid managers and utilities can integrate high quantities of variable renewable energy, like solar and wind power, and dramatically reduce carbon emissions by using several existing, and dependable market-proven strategies and technologies in this update to the 2014 “Teaching the Duck to Fly.” The original analysis included ten strategies designed to reduce strain on the grid during daily periods of high renewable energy generation. The strategies, most of which still apply, include such measures as timing the use of energy-intensive equipment to coincide with high renewable energy production. This updated report identifies several new approaches that have proven effective and valuable to utilities already integrating high levels of renewable energy. These include the use of ice storage for air conditioning, controlling water and wastewater pumping, and focusing renewable energy purchases on projects that produce energy when demand is greatest, such as wind farms that peak in late afternoon.
The duck curve describes the new shape of consumer energy demand in markets with high levels of renewable energy. Demand in such markets, which used to peak in the early afternoon, now peaks later in the day, and grids may experience lower demand during the former mid-day peak. The updated strategies continue to enable substantially greater renewable energy integration, better system reliability, and lower costs by modifying the load profiles and better utilizing existing assets.
