Study finds offshore wind could drive down energy costs in New England,
US

Date:
April 21, 2022
Source:
North Carolina State University
Summary:
While wind power is expected to be a 'saving grace' during extreme
winter storms, researchers wanted to look at whether storms could
also disrupt power supplies and drive up prices.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
A new analysis led by North Carolina State University researchers found offshore wind power could help lower wholesale electricity prices on
average for six states in New England, with relatively low risk of wind turbines failing during extreme winter storms.


========================================================================== Although very high wind speeds during winter storms could cause turbines
to go temporarily offline, they found the largest risk of sudden losses of
wind power would be in summer when wind speeds are lowest. The findings, published in the journal Energy, could help utilities, policymakers and consumers in New England determine what to expect in terms of price and reliability from adding offshore wind power in the region.

"Adding offshore wind to this market reduces wholesale prices for
electricity overall and reduces emissions pretty consistently," said
Jordan Kern, assistant professor of forestry and environmental resources
at NC State. "When we consider these bad winter storms, the cases are
rare when you'd lose wind power due to excessively high wind speeds,
and even then it doesn't break the system or cause a shock to the
market. A bigger issue we identified is what to do in the summertime,
when it's really hot, and wind speeds are low." There are plans to add significant additional wind power capacity in New England -- as much
as 60% of proposed new power generation would come from offshore and
onshore wind farms. Already, the region is home to the nation's first
major offshore wind farm: a 30-megawatt farm off the cost of Rhode
Island. And while wind power is expected to be a "saving grace" during
extreme winter storms, researchers wanted to look at whether storms
could also disrupt power supplies and drive up prices since turbines
will shut off at wind speeds over 55 miles per hour.

"Land-based wind power makes up most of all wind power in the U.S.,"
Kern said.

"A lot of that is located in the middle of the country. If you live on the
East Coast, though, land is expensive, and wind speeds are lower. That's
when offshore starts to look good." In the analysis, researchers used a
model of the power grid to simulate the effect of additional wind power
on power prices in six states in New England - - Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont - - during an
extreme cold snap in December 2017 to January 2018. During the storm, electricity demand and natural gas prices spiked because of a "bomb"
cyclone storm.



==========================================================================
They found added offshore wind power decreased the severity of price
spikes during the cold snap, even though there was a sudden loss of
power when the turbines cut off on one day due to the cyclone storm.

On average, they found wholesale prices would have dropped by $28.81
megawatts per hour if there had been an additional 4,000 megawatts of
offshore wind power online during the storm.

"We were looking to see if there would be blackouts because of this
sudden lack of energy from offshore wind power plants, but we didn't see
a case where the system went into a blackout in any of the scenarios we evaluated," said the study's lead author Kerem Ziya Akdemir, a graduate
student in forestry and environmental resources at NC State. "Most of the
time during winter weather events, having wind is a good thing because
the wind speeds are high. Only rarely did the wind speed get so high
that the wind turbines shut off completely." They also looked whether
adding 800 or 4,000 megawatts worth of offshore wind power would impact
the price of power across 69 years between 1949 and 2018, compared to if
there were no additional offshore wind capacity added. They found that additional wind power lowered the average wholesale price of electricity
across the study period.

"We observed that if we increase the offshore wind capacity in the region, generally the wholesale prices will be lower," Akdemir said. "There were
one or two instances where we observed very, very high prices because
excessive wind speeds caused the turbines to cut off, leading to a sudden
loss of wind power in the region, but those did not have very serious consequences for the New England electricity grid." In the scenario with
the most wind power added, prices increased by an average of 89 cents
per megawatt hour during cut-out events when the turbines were shut off.



========================================================================== Cut-out events from excessive wind speeds were also not the cause of
the highest prices in the analysis. The most frequent and severe price increases happened during summer months when people use a lot of power
to cool their homes and wind speeds were low.

"In the wintertime, there's a little bit less demand for electricity
than in the summer, so there's some other power plants that can kick on
and replace the wind quickly," Kern said.

The study looked at wholesale prices of electricity, and the researchers
said the question of how wind generation could impact the cost of power
for consumers is still open.

"The findings overall suggest that adding wind offshore to the system
almost all the time will result in lower market prices and lower
emissions," Kern said. "Whether that means that consumers will pay less
for electricity is a much trickier question. It's not cheap to build
offshore wind farms; you have to build them in the ocean. Consumers could
have to pay for that." The study, "Assessing risks for New England's
wholesale electricity market from wind power losses during extreme winter storms," was published online in Energy. The study was co-authored by
Jonathan Lamontagne of Tufts University.

The study was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science
as part of research in the MultiSector Dynamics, Earth and Environmental
System Modeling Program.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided
by North_Carolina_State_University. Original written by Laura
Oleniacz. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Kerem Ziya Akdemir, Jordan D. Kern, Jonathan Lamontagne. Assessing
risks
for New England's wholesale electricity market from wind power
losses during extreme winter storms. Energy, 2022; 251: 123886 DOI:
10.1016/ j.energy.2022.123886 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/04/220421154138.htm

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