Toward Net-Zero Electricity in Europe: What Are the Challenges for the Power System?
Marie-Ann Evans, Caroline Bono, Ye Wang
Abstract
Europe has set an exciting and ambitious journey toward net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. This target largely relies on decarbonizing the power system and developing renewable energy. As hydro capacities are already well developed, this renewable generation can come from other sources, such as biomass, geothermal sources, and for an increasing share, from wind and solar, as illustrated in <xref ref-type="fig" rid="fig1" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Figure 1</xref> . Wind and solar are not only weather dependent but also interfaced to the network by power electronics. The characteristics of these variable inverter-based technologies are fundamentally different from historical power plants. They lead to big challenges for system operation at the transmission level because they do not naturally provide the same services to support the system, such as inertia.