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The growing share of electricity production from solar and mainly wind resources constantly increases the stochastic nature of the power system. Modelling the high share of renewable energy sources – and in particular wind power – crucially depends on the adequate representation of the intermittency and characteristics of the wind resource which is related to the accuracy of the approach in converting wind speed data into power values. One of the main factors contributing to the uncertainty in these conversion methods is the selection of the spatial resolution. Although numerical weather prediction models can simulate wind speeds at higher spatial resolution (up to 1 × 1 km) than a reanalysis (generally, ranging from about 25 km to 70 km), they require high computational resources and massive storage systems: therefore, the most common alternative is to use the reanalysis data. However, local wind features could not be captured by the use of a reanalysis technique and could be translated into misinterpretations of the wind power peaks, ramping capacities, the behaviour of power prices, as well as bidding strategies for the electricity market. This study contributes to the understanding what is captured by different wind speeds spatial resolution datasets, the importance of using high resolution data for the conversion into power and the implications in power system analyses. It is proposed a methodology to increase the spatial resolution from a reanalysis. This study presents an open access renewable generation time series dataset for the EU-28 and neighbouring countries at hourly intervals and at different geographical aggregation levels (country, bidding zone and administrative territorial unit), for a 30 year period taking into account the wind generating fleet at the end of 2015. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The amount of wind energy entering the European electricity transmission system is expected to increase in next decades. Indeed, Europe is on the path towards a deep transformation of its energy system, triggered in part by Directive 2009/28/EC (also known as the Renewable Energy Directive), in which wind energy will play an important role. Europe is large enough to be impacted by multiple weather systems at any one time and as a consequence, absolute values and time patterns of wind power generation are different in each European country because of these non-homogeneous meteorological conditions. A future pan-European power transmission grid aiming to dispatch electricity production throughout the continent will thus have to face the challenge of balancing in real time differently intermittent and strongly inhomogeneous resources. In this study, based on the wind fields provided at daily resolution for the period 1961–2050 by 12 regional climate models involved in the ENSEMBLES climate modelling intercomparison project, we have evaluated absolute national and European wind power production and its expected changes following the evolution of climate in Europe. Moreover, we have suggested a methodology to investigate in a quantitative way the complementarity among wind power patterns in different countries. Results show that the evolution of climate in Europe as projected by the ENSEMBLES participants, is not expected to have major impact on absolute wind energy production. Furthermore, the complementarity of wind energy patterns in different countries can be exploited by better integration of trans-boundary power exchange in Europe. For this reason, results are also discussed in the light of the design and dimensioning of the European electricity transmission system, with a special emphasis on the cross-border interconnections issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper provides a geographical assessment of potential bioenergy production in the European Union from residues of eight agricultural crops (wheat, barley, rye, oat, maize, rice, rapeseed and sunflower). The evaluation is geographically explicit at the scale of 1km2 and is based on two main computational steps. In the first step the amount of crop residues resulting from statistical assessment based on the methodology developed by Scarlat et al. [1] have been spatially allocated on the EU-27 1 [1] The EU-27 expression symbolizes the current status of EU enlargements. Further information: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Glossary:EU-27. territory using several auxiliary geospatial layers describing, for example, land cover, expected biomass productivity derived from soil parameters, climatic zones and topographical conditions. In the second step the number of model power plants (i.e., plants with a size of 50MW thermal input and a raw material demand of about 100kt/yr might be conveniently fed with available crop residues was estimated on the basis of two different allocation strategies implying a different grade of optimization. The results show that the estimated crop residue resources in EU-27 could provide fuel for about 850 plants expected to produce about 1500PJ/yr. Mobilization needs for the residues are also estimated, leading to a total amount of 1.5×1012–2×1012 tkm are necessary for the full potential exploitation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]