An Action-Oriented Approach to Make the Most of the Wind and Solar Power Complementarity

Solar and wind power are called to play a main role in the transition toward decarbonized electricity systems. However, their integration in the energy mix is highly compromised due to the intermittency of their production caused by weather and climate variability. To face the challenge, here we present research about actionable strategies for wind and solar photovoltaic facilities deployment that exploit their complementarity in order to minimize the volatility of their combined production while guaranteeing a certain supply. The developed methodology has been implemented in an open-access step-wise model called CLIMAX. It first identifies regions with homogeneous temporal variability of the resources, and then determines the optimal shares of each technology over such regions. In the simplistic application performed here, we customize the model to narrow the monthly deviations of the total wind-plus-solar electricity production from a given curve (here, the mean annual cycle of the total production) across five European domains. For the current shares of both technologies, the results show that an optimal siting of the power units would reduce the standard deviation of the monthly anomalies of the total wind-plus-solar power generation by up to 20% without loss in the mean capacity factor as compared to a baseline scenario with an evenly spatial distribution of the installations. This result further improves (up to 60% in specific regions) if the total shares of each technology are also optimized, thus encouraging the use of CLIMAX for practical guidance of next-generation renewable energy scenarios.

Automated summary

The CLIMAX model has been developed to address the challenge of integrating wind and solar photovoltaic facilities in the energy mix. By exploiting their complementarity, the model optimizes the siting of the power units and the shares of each technology to minimize production volatility while ensuring a certain supply. Results show that optimal siting can reduce the standard deviation of monthly anomalies in total wind-plus-solar power generation by up to 20%.