Weather Driven Complementarity Between Daily Energy Demand at One Location and Renewable Supply at Another

Abstract

In a future world where most of the energy must come from intermittent renewable energy sources such as wind or solar energy, it would be more efficient if, for each demand area, we could determine the locations for which the output of an energy source would naturally match the demand fluctuations from that area. In parallel, meteorological weather systems such as midlatitude cyclones are often organized in a way that naturally shapes where areas of greater energy need (say, regions with more cold air) are with respect to windier or sunnier areas, and these are generally not collocated. As a result, the best places to generate renewable energy may not be near consumption sites; these may however be determined by common meteorological patterns. Using data from a reanalysis of six decades of past weather, we determined the complementarity between different sources of energy as well as the relationships between renewable supply and demand at daily-averaged time scales for several North American cities. In general, demand and solar power tend to be slightly positively correlated at nearby locations away from the Rockies; however, wind power often must be obtained from greater distances and at altitude for energy production to be better timed with consumption.