Long-Term Reliability Impacts of a Power System with Climate Change Effects on Wind Farms

Abstract

The Wind power generation is reliant on prevailing climatic conditions and can be vulnerable to climate changes in several ways. This paper investigates the reliability performances of a power system with climate change effects resulting through integrated wind farms. The study simulates wind farm models with ambient weather conditions. A long-term climate change model with different emission scenarios is simulated at the wind farms and then reliability performance of a power system is assessed using Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS). The study incorporates a comprehensive multi-model ensemble of EURO-CORDEX at high a resolution which scales down Global Circulation Model (GCM) and Regional Climate Model (RCM). The simulation results suggest that the wind generation integrated power system's reliability is particularly impacted by the changes in climatic conditions. This impact is conspicuous in RCP8.5 emissions scenario where an increase in expected energy not served (EENS) is prominent over the long run, whereas RCP4.5 emissions scenario is not significantly affected with EENS. RCP2.6 emissions scenario showed a negative behaviour from medium term to long term but the overall EENS is still less compared with RCP8.5 emissions scenarios. Case studies are presented considering a geographic location in Birmingham, UK.