Grid integration of renewable energy in Qatar: Potentials and limitations

This study presents an analysis of the current electricity supply grid in Qatar and investigates the potential of integrating various renewable energy sources (RES) into the grid. The hourly demand profile for electricity, cooling, and freshwater is used to investigate the impact of wind turbines, photovoltaics, and concentrated solar power integration on the environmental emissions and total annual cost of the systems. A one-year dynamic analysis based on an hourly time step is conducted using the EnergyPLAN tool. The results show that large-scale installations of renewable energy technologies can decrease the emission rate from electricity production at a relatively lower cost. A reference case scenario representing the current state of affairs along with six other cases representing various single and hybrid renewable energy combinations for integration into the electricity supply is presented in terms of their ability to avoid excess electricity production. The eighth case scenario presents a hypothetical electricity demand for the year 2025. The results show that increasing the share of RES in electricity production is possible by as much as 80%. The optimum cases for the deployment of wind, photovoltaic (PV), and concentrated solar power (CSP) with storage technologies presented a 28.3%, 23.4%, and 38.2% share to electricity produced, respectively. The market economic simulation shows that the total annual cost for some of the scenarios that integrated renewable energy was lower than that of the reference case currently deployed in the country. (c) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Automated summary

The study demonstrates that integrating large-scale renewable energy technologies can reduce emission rates from electricity production at relatively lower costs. Various scenarios of single and hybrid renewable energy combinations show that increasing the share of renewable energy in electricity production is feasible. Market simulations suggest that total annual costs for scenarios integrating renewable energy could be lower than the current reference case deployed in the country.