Designing a sector-coupled European energy system robust to 60 years of historical weather data
<|reference_start|>Designing a sector-coupled European energy system robust to 60 years of historical weather data: As energy systems transform to rely on renewable energy and electrification, they encounter stronger year-to-year variability in energy supply and demand. However, most infrastructure planning is based on a single weather year, resulting in a lack of robustness. In this paper, we optimize energy infrastructure for a European energy system designed for net-zero CO$_2$ emissions in 62 different weather years. Subsequently, we fix the capacity layouts and simulate their operation in every weather year, to evaluate resource adequacy and CO$_2$ emissions abatement. We show that interannual weather variability causes variation of $\pm$10\% in total system cost. The most expensive capacity layout obtains the lowest net CO$_2$ emissions but not the highest resource adequacy. Instead, capacity layouts designed with years including compound weather events result in a more robust and cost-effective design. Deploying CO$_2$-emitting backup generation is a cost-effective robustness measure, which only increase CO$_2$ emissions marginally as the average CO$_2$ emissions remain less than 1\% of 1990 levels. Our findings highlight how extreme weather years drive investments in robustness measures, making them compatible with all weather conditions within six decades of historical weather data.<|reference_end|>
@article{gøtske2024designing,
    title={Designing a sector-coupled European energy system robust to 60 years of
  historical weather data},
    author={Ebbe Kyhl G{o}tske, Gorm Bruun Andresen, Fabian Neumann and Marta
  Victoria},
    journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.12178},
    year={2024},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    eprint={2404.12178},
    primaryClass={physics.soc-ph cs.SY eess.SY}
}