New research on solar cells has arrived, it could change all our plans.
Scientific modeling of the production of weather-dependent renewable energy carriers is a serious challenge - stated former State Secretary Attila Aszódi, university professor at the BME Institute of Nuclear Technology, who reached astonishing results with his work group.
"Based on the meteorological parameters of several years, we taught our artificial neural network - a mathematical procedure - to show, in the case of given external conditions, what kind of solar energy and wind energy production and what kind of electricity demand can be expected," said Attila Aszódi about the recently published research, which machine learning and artificial neural networks were put into service.
The resulting model enables a detailed, hour-by-hour examination of the Hungarian electricity system, breaking down the various energy sources.
Thanks to the model, it is possible to demonstrate the evolution of the future electricity demand with hourly resolution, and also how it can be covered by the power plants planned in the future.
They can cannibalize their own market
"It is a very interesting result that solar power plants above an installed capacity of 6,000-8,000 megawatts - without industrial, grid-scale electricity storage - begin to cannibalize their own market: since solar power plants always operate in the same period, we cannot exceed the said capacity for many hours of the year to use up all the electricity that is produced", explained Attila Aszódi, who believes that in such cases the system controller will be forced to reduce the production of solar power plants and turn off some units.
It is also an important experience that, despite large renewable capacities, there are many situations when, despite the large installed power plant capacity, consumer needs cannot be met when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing at the same time. These are called Dunkelflaute based on the German term, dark windy conditions in Hungarian. In such cases, the power supply must be provided from completely different sources. Previous studies have shown that the neighboring countries are also planning similar energy developments, so if the current energy policy plans were to be implemented, unfortunately, we cannot expect to use electricity imported from the neighboring countries to supplement the missing domestic resources.
According to Attila Asódi, if Hungary is not careful, it can easily end up in a situation where these periods are combined with significant unmet demand for electricity. This would jeopardize the continuous supply of consumers. Based on the factors, only the effective cooperation of nuclear power plants and renewable sources can ensure the appropriate electricity system, however, careful technical planning is essential for this, explained the expert.
Frequent dark winds
The Hungarian researchers, led by Attila Aszódi, examined in detail the annual frequency and distribution of dark windy conditions over the past 42 years. They found: "20-25-30 dark wind calms of 2, 3 or 4 hours - if we define the supply of solar and wind power plants as 5 percent or less during these periods - occur every year. There are 7-8 dark wind calms lasting 10 hours per year, but even such conditions lasting more than 15 hours occur 3-5 times," concluded the former state secretary. They also found a year in the last four decades when a particular Dunkelflaute event in Hungary lasted 35, 39 or even 61 hours.
These unfavorable conditions are more common here in the Carpathian Basin than in Germany or Belgium according to the literature. It follows from this that the electricity system must be prepared for these situations, and other power plants - typically nuclear power plants - must also be included in the power plant mix, which are able to produce continuously, regardless of the weather
- said Attila Asódi, who continued: the German green energy strategy considered incorporating natural gas-fired power plants into the system for these situations, but the availability of the necessary natural gas deteriorated and its price increased significantly as a result of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Thus, due to natural gas supply limitations, the worst is now being experienced in Europe:
He started using more and more lignite and black coal again.
"When the wind is not blowing, the coal power plants are turned on, which can be called many things, but it is certainly not a favorable solution from the point of view of climate protection. Germany is currently balancing the fluctuations of renewables with the help of lignite and black coal, at the cost of huge carbon dioxide emissions," he explained.
When we look to the more distant future and draw attention to the problems arising from fluctuating renewable sources, the arguments in favor of hydrogen emerge. However, it should be noted that hydrogen-based energy storage is currently a technology under development and is extremely expensive. So far, no one knows when it will be possible to include it in industrial electricity storage. The point is not to have ideas, but to have the recipe for how to use those ideas - following Malcolm Gladwell.
It is very important that the power plant portfolio of each country, including Hungary, is designed with great care, taking into account the technical conditions, so that the conditions for a continuous power supply can be ensured in the future.
- Attila Aszódi presented their results, who believes that investments in energy, as in other fields, require money, and we do not have unlimited resources. When choosing technologies, it is therefore very important to address economic issues, including the return on investments.
Their other, earlier simulations show that battery cells connected to the grid can be used well for short-term energy storage, but they are not suitable for bridging longer periods. The existing pumped-reservoir hydropower plants in neighboring countries bring great flexibility to the electricity supply system there, Austria in particular has huge such capacities, but there are also such facilities in Slovakia, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia. In Hungary, it is not physically possible to have many pumped reservoir hydropower plants, but at the same time, the fact that one or two such power plants, even with a capacity of 500-600 megawatts per unit, would be a huge help in balancing fluctuations.
This is not a nuclear lobby, these are the facts
The researchers found that if the system had 15,000 megawatts of solar power capacity, which is five times the current industrial solar power capacity of nearly 3,000 megawatts, and roughly ten times the current 320 megawatts of wind power capacity, 3,000 megawatts of wind power would still only be able to be increased to 42 percent. the value of carbon-neutral electricity production in Hungary. At the same time, this is less than half of the common European Union objective of increasing the share of carbon-neutral electricity to 90 percent.
Mathematics also proves: nuclear power plants are necessary.
Nuclear energy is a carbon-neutral power generation method just like renewables - the European Commission itself has recognized this. The huge difference is that the production of nuclear power plants is practically independent of the weather, and their utilization factor is much higher: while a 1,000 megawatt solar power plant capacity in Hungary produces approximately 1.5 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year, a 1,000 megawatt nuclear power plant capacity produces around 8 billion kilowatt hours .
We could wave at that, but the difference is more than fivefold.
"The nuclear power plant is a string producer, meaning it can continuously produce at its rated output. In comparison, solar and wind power plants constantly change their performance depending on the weather. It is necessary to combine these sources in the electricity system so that it can be operated well"
Attila Asódi pointed out.
The results of the research are clear: only by combining solar energy, wind energy and nuclear energy can a system be built in Hungary that is able to achieve the EU goals for carbon-neutral electricity production.
Hungary did a very good job of acting together with other like-minded countries, such as France, in order to implement the so-called asked to include nuclear energy in addition to renewables in the taxonomy decree
- indicated the professor of the University of Technology, who said that the research method described in their study is suitable for analyzing electricity systems with different compositions, it can also be applied to other countries where the meteorological conditions are significantly different, so the meteorological and electricity system data there must be re-taught neural network models so that the research method can also be applied there.
"Not least, the further development of the method we have developed may also be suitable for further developing the production forecasting methods of the domestic solar and wind power park - currently operating with a rather large error - in order to reduce the amount and costs of balancing energy, and to create a better functioning, more flexible let's get a system," added Attila Asódi.
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