Excess Energy in Renewable Electricity Generation

Mark Koziel, Yuting Luo, Claire Wang, Fan Yang

University of Chicago

I.

Introduction

Fossil fuels are the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in the world, and their
production and consumption usually brings heavy pollutants to the air and water [4]. Hence,
there is growing concern about the health and environmental impacts of electricity production
from fossil fuels, and this has led to the fast development of renewable energy generation.
Among all renewable resources used for electricity production, global support is strongest for
solar and wind, which have been growing quickly in recent years and comprised 5.2% of total
US electricity generation in 2014 [5, 6].
However, the high variability and intermittency of these resources create challenges for grid
operators trying to manage and dispatch their generation. While power grids tend to produce the
right amount of electricity at the right time, the uncontrollable variation in wind/solar generation
makes it difficult to consistently and reliably meet electric demand [7]. On the other hand, due to
the fact that the development of wind/solar farms usually outpaces the development of
transmission infrastructure, power grids must also deal with transmission congestion while
dispatching electricity from these sources. With an economic maximum generation output set by
the demand and transmission constraints, any excess energy that exceeds this constraint cannot
be accepted by the grid it is stranded energy [2]. Moreover, because the incremental generation
cost of renewable energy is zero and the storage cost is high, whenever there is stranded energy,
it is wasted (or curtailed) and not dispatched. Power grids call this curtailment or dispatch down.

In this paper, we explore the excess energy in wind and solar farms. We collect data on
wind/solar generation and demands, as well as curtailment or dispatch down, from both MISO
1

(Midcontinent Independent System Operator) and CAISO (California Independent System

Operator). By looking into these data, we find that a large amount of wind/solar generation gets
stranded and wasted because of the reasons mentioned above.
We further explore the possible solutions for excess renewable energy, including different
types of batteries, hydro pumping, compressed air, and so on. By comparing the cost of different
methods, we conclude that Tesla Powerpack at a price of $250/kWh is the cheapest option for the
storage of renewable energy. Considering this battery price and the small portion of excess
energy that actually needs to be stored, storage costs are not a large portion of costs for
renewables.
Overall, despite the issue of excess energy, renewable electricity production certainly has the
potential to become competitive with fossil fuel sources.

II.

Background

We chose to study solar photovoltaics and wind because they are on track to be the most
significant renewable sources of energy. The fraction of US electricity generated by wind and
solar power has grown rapidly in the recent past, and is predicted to continue growing for the
foreseeable future. Between 2001 and 2011, there was a three-fold increase in solar generation
and an eighteen-fold increase in generation using wind. In 2011, solar and wind combined
contributed 3% of total electricity generation in the United States, with solar alone contributing
less than 0.1% [8].
From 2013 to 2014, the amount of electricity generated by utility-scale solar PV
installations more than doubled [9], and in 2014, solar contributed 0.4% of total United States
electricity generation, while wind contributed 4.4% [10]. Solar photovoltaic capacity grew 77%
per year from 2011 to 2014. If it continues at this rate, solar will contribute more than 10% of US

electricity before 2030. This would cut 280 million metric tons of carbon emissions, equivalent
to taking 59 million cars off the road [11].
The wind energy sector is growing continuously, but not at a steady rate. The total annual
generation of US wind farms in 2014 was more than 30 times greater than in 2000, producing a
total of 181791000 MWh (~180 million MWh) [12,13]. However, cumulative wind power
capacity in the US grew by 28% in 2012, but only by 2% in 2013. This greatly diminished
growth rate was largely due to the late extension of the Renewable Electricity Production Tax
Credit (PTC) [14]. Since the growth of wind power depends on the presence or absence of
federal subsidies, its immediate future in the United States is uncertain.

III.

Wind Curtailment in MISO

In this section, we present wind curtailments collected from Midcontinent Independent System
Operator (MISO). MISO has more than 12 GW of wind capacity and a peak demand of 98 GW
[1]. Before 2011, they used manual curtailments to reduce the output of wind generation. In mid
2011, they launched the Dispatchable Intermittent Resource (DIR) protocol that requires wind
plants to bid into the energy market [2]. Since then, the excess generation in wind plants is
automatically dispatched down.
Figure 1 shows the total energy manually curtailed/down-dispatched in MISO for a
recent 2.5-year period. DIR dispatch down accounts for the majority of reduced generation since
April 2013. The average curtailed generation (manual curtailment + dispatch down) from June
2011 to October 2013 is about 84 GWh.

Figure 1. MISO estimated manual curtailment versus dispatched down

We also looked into the excess wind generation in 2014 [3], which is dispatched down as
intermittent resources in an automatic process. Since manual curtailment is no longer a major
part of curtailed generation, we do not show it in the figure. Figure 2 shows that MISO wind
generation and DIR dispatch down in 2014 follow similar trend, and these two parts constitute
the total available wind energy. DIR dispatch down is about 4.2% 8.3% of the total available
wind energy, which means nearly 1/10 of wind generation is stranded and curtailed because of
oversupply and transmission congestion.

Figure 2. MISO wind generation and DIR dispatch down in 2014

We calculated the detailed numbers of the seasonal wind utilization, as shown in Table 1.
Similar to the previous figures, wind energy is consumed least in summer and most in spring.
There is most energy dispatched down in spring, which takes about 722GWh / (11161GWh +
722GWh) ~ 6.1% of the total available wind energy. As for the whole year, the ratio of DIR
dispatch down to total available energy is 2308GWh / (38982GWh + 2308GWh) ~ 5.6%.
Table 1. MISO wind generation and DIR dispatch down in 2014
Wind Generation (GWh)

DIR Dispatch Down (GWh)

Total

Monthly

Daily

Total

Monthly

Daily

Winter

11008

3669.33

122.31

654

218.00

7.27

Spring

11161

3720.33

121.32

722

240.67

7.85

Summer

6182

2060.67

67.20

371

123.67

4.03

Fall

10631

3543.67

116.82

561

187.00

6.16

Total

38982

3248.50

106.80

2308

192.33

6.32

To understand these numbers, we compare them to the electricity generation from fossil
fuels. Here are our assumptions:

The energy density of coal is 24 MJ/kg.

The efficiency of power plant boilers is 95%.

The efficiency of steam turbines is 45%.

The efficiency of electricity generators is 98%.

The efficiency of electricity generation from coal is 95% * 45% * 98% ~ 42%. Since the
daily stranded wind generation is 6.32GWh, the amount of coal that is needed to generate same
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amount of electricity is 6.32GWh 42% 24 MJ/kg ~ 2257 tons. If coal price is $50/ton, the
cost of 2257 tons of coal is $112,850.

IV.

Excess Energy in CAISO

In order to calculate the levelized cost of electricity generation (LCOE) for solar power, we
started by finding a value for the capital cost per unit of energy in terms of $/W for a utility sized
solar farm. The Topaz Solar Farms construction began in 2012 and was completed by the end of
2013. It is a 550 MW capacity solar farm that is currently the largest solar farm in the world. The
installation of the farm cost $2.4 billion [23]. That means that the capital cost is equal to $2.4
billion divided by 550 MW, which leaves a price of $4.4/Wcap. Ignoring the complexities of the
necessity of borrowing money, we simply multiplied this cost by two which brings us to
$8.8/Wcap. Looking at the data for the Topaz Solar Farm for output energy in the month of July,
we obtain a capacity factor of 30% [23]. This means that the true capital cost can be found by
dividing the value $8.8/Wcap by .30 which raises the cost to $29.33/Wtrue. The total power
produced over the lifetime of a solar cell is found by multiplying 25 years by 8760 hrs/year and
dividing by 1000 to obtain a value of 219 kWh/Wtrue. We can now use these two numbers to
obtain the LCOE for capital costs. We divide $29.33/Wtrue by 219 kWh/Wtrue to obtain a value
of 13.39 cents/kWh. The total operating and maintenance (O&M) costs for solar power end up
being 1.5 cents/kWh. This means that the total LCOE for solar power adds up to 14.89
cents/kWh. This is the number we will use in our calculations as the cost of electricity generation
for solar power, but lower numbers will also be used as future estimates for the price of solar.
The price of solar has been rapidly decreasing and that change will continue to add to the
viability of solar power as an economically competitive energy source.
The calculations necessary to find the LCOE for wind power are similar to those used for
solar power. For the capital cost per unit of energy in terms of $/W, we looked at utility-scale
6

wind farms in the Western United States and that price turned out to be $2.1/Wcap [13]. We
multiply this cost by two for the same reasons as before. This leaves us with a price of
$4.2/Wcap. Wind in California is not the strongest wind in the country, but it still yields a
capacity factor of 25% [13]. This brings the true capital cost to $16.8/Wtrue. We find the total
power produced over the lifetime of the windmill by multiplying 20 years by 8760 hrs/year and
dividing by 1000 to obtain 175.2 kWh/Wtrue. Just as before, we can use these two numbers to
find the total capital costs for wind power. When we divide the two numbers by each other, we
obtain a value of 9.59 cents/kWh. The O&M costs for wind power are estimated at 1.1
cents/kWh. This brings the total LCOE for wind power to 10.69 cents/kWh. This number will be
used in the calculations as the cost of electricity generation for wind power.
For our calculations we utilized data from CAISO [24]. We took the electricity load, wind
output, and solar output data for the entire month of July 2014. We then averaged those data to
obtain daily averages for the month. We chose the month of July because on average that is the
month with the highest electricity load, meaning that energy generation must also be higher to
meet demand. In order to properly do these calculations one would have to examine the largest
disparities in wind and solar generation as compared to electricity load. For example, solar
energy generation in the winter is much lower just as is load, but we would have to find the exact
numbers of those decreases. The purpose of our calculations is simply to examine the outlook for
renewable energy when load is greatest. The energy storage requirements in these calculations
would be the lowest possible, especially if wind energy is the predominant renewable energy
source, since wind is much more variable than solar insolation on any given day. The first thing
we did was graph the electricity load, wind output, and solar output data. We then scaled up the
wind and solar outputs so that the amount of energy was equivalent to the electricity load. From
this graph, it can be seen that the wind energy output is lower than the load in the middle of the
7

day and higher than the load at night, while the opposite is true for the solar energy output. The
amounts between the curves are the amount of energy that would need to be stored for this
technology to be used. This amount for solar energy is around 320,000 MW, while wind energy
totals about 130,000 MW. This means that solar energy would be much more dependent on
energy storage, and would have to be cheaper than wind energy to be viable. Another important
thing to note is that even in a system using 100% renewable energy, it would not be necessary to
store the full amount of electricity used over the course of the day, which reduces battery costs.

California Energy Demands and Renewable Energy

90000
Solar
Energy Output (MW)
80000

Electricity Load (MW)

70000
60000
50000

Solar Energy Output (MW)

Energy (MW)Adjusted
40000

Wind Energy Output (MW)

30000
20000
10000
Adjusted Wind Energy Output (MW)
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Time of Day (Hour)

Figure 3. CAISO energy demands and renewable generation (historical data)

The next thing that we did was to take our previously calculated solar and wind energy
prices, along with the price for the Tesla Powerpack, as it has the greatest potential to be able to
scale up infinitely within the next few years. With these numbers, we were able to change the
percentages of wind and solar energy being used along with the amount of storage that these
technologies required. In the graph below is the 100% wind and 100% solar that was seen
previously, along with the plot of a system running on 80% wind and 20% solar, which we found
through trial and error to be the optimal ratio. This is due to the fact that wind energy generation
prices are so much cheaper than solar energy generation prices that wind energy is favored even
in California, where solar insolation is highest. However, solar energy is still useful, since it
makes up for the large energy deficit that wind generation leaves in the middle of the day.

Optimal Amounts for California Renewable Energy

90000
Electricity
Load (MW)
80000

Adjusted Solar Energy Output (MW)

70000
60000
50000

Adjusted Wind Energy Output (MW)

Energy (MW)
40000

Combined Energy Output (MW)

30000
20000
10000
0

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Time of Day (Hour)

Figure 4. CAISO energy demands and renewable generation (latest data)

The electricity prices for this optimal ratio today would be 11.99 cents/kWh, which is
only slightly more expensive than the average price of electricity in the United States. This price
is definitely underestimated, as wind energy has very large fluctuations in generation, sometimes
9

up to a factor of five during some parts of the day. This means that either more storage would be
required than the calculations for these averages suggest, or more average energy generation
would be required, or some combination of both, which inevitably drives the price of renewables
higher than the optimal price found above. These calculations were done using technologies
available today, but prices for these technologies have been dropping rapidly, especially for solar
and battery storage technologies. Because of this, we redid the calculations using a value of
$1.8/W, which is the forecasted price of solar within five to ten years [25]. This translates to solar
power energy generation being 6.09 cents/kWh, which is lower than the average price for
electricity generation in the United States today. The costs of generating wind energy are not
declining as quickly, so it was not necessary to calculate an adjusted price for wind. Taking into
account energy storage along with current wind energy generation prices, we found the optimal
ratio in this new scenario to be 70% solar and 30% wind. Wind energy is still a significant
portion because of energy storage costs. With these numbers, the price of electricity turns out to
be 9.37 cents/kWh, which is still below the current price of non-renewable energy electricity
generation.
These calculations greatly underestimate the amount of storage that is needed in order to
switch to full renewable energy sources, but the prices of these technologies will drop even
further than assumed above because of more efficient installations and economy of scale for the
manufacturing of the technologies, in addition to the technologies themselves becoming more
efficient. The most important obstacle for renewable energy will be storage. Renewable energy
sources are not able to provide constant or reliable energy, and so their excess energy must be
stored if energy is to be available when demand exceeds output. Supercapacitors seem to be a
very promising option for energy storage despite their large initial costs. This technology would
last a very long time and so in the long run the cost of this technology is much smaller than even
10

compared to the Tesla Powerpack. Hydropower storage is also a cheap option that is able to
provide some energy storage. It is not infinitely scalable, but it should still be used to its
maximum potential. With these technologies, curtailment of renewable energy would be
obsolete, as it would be cheaper to simply store excess energy rather than wasting some of the
capacity of the renewable technologies raising the cost per energy unit generated. Even though a
full switch to renewable energy is not currently possible, it may well be possible within a
generation as these technologies continue to improve.

V.

Possible Solutions

As discussed in the previous section, the daily excess energy is as much as 107 kWh, and the
peak power excess is 104 MW. Therefore, we are looking for an energy storage system that has a
huge power and energy capacity, while remains as cheap and effective as possible.
Rechargeable Batteries [16, 17]
Batteries are the most developed electric energy storage technology, and can serve as a
benchmark for other kinds of technologies, since the Tesla Motors company is producing and
selling rechargeable batteries on a large scale.
The price offered by the company is described by the price per capacity ($/kWh).
However, what really matters to us is the price per energy stored. Therefore, we need to know the
lifetime of the batteries and estimate the cycles it can endure, based on the assumption that each
battery run one cycle in a day. (Usually, products have a cycle life and a lifetime. In these
calculations, we choose the shorter one and convert the units to cycles.) The price per energy
stored equals the price per capacity divided by lifetime cycles, which is close to the price of
electricity. Batteries require the least to work of all the technologies, as will be shown later in
this section. Also, the volume of each battery is comparably small, so it will not require too vast
a space. Therefore, battery storage technology is realistic.
11

Supercapacitors [18, 19]

While batteries store electrical energy in the form of electrochemical energy, capacitors
work in a more direct way without converting the energy; hence, they are more efficient.
However, they are often much more expensive and require a much larger space, as they are
limited by their low energy density and capacity (0.14kWh compared to 10kWh of Tesla Powerpack). The projected cycle life can reach as many as 1,000,000 cycles, but the lifetime is only 10
years, equivalent to 3650 cycles. (All data are based on the Maxwell Technology 125V
transportation module BMOD0063 P125 B08.) The high price per capacity leads to a high price
per energy stored, which makes this technology unappealing.
Pumped-Storage Hydroelectricity (PSH) [20]
Electric energy surplus can also be stored as gravitational potential, which is inspired by
the principle of dams, using two reservoirs at different heights that are connected by hydro
pumps and turbines. This is the most common grid-scale storage technology in the world,
accounting for 99% of bulk storage worldwide, with good reason.
The Bath County Pumped Storage Station, for instance, has a reservoir capacity of
34,447,000 m3 and an elevation of 380 m, which enables it to store up to 36 million kWh of
energy; the power generation capacity is 3000 MW. Its construction was finished in 1985, at a
cost of $1.6 billion. Based on this information, we can make a conservative assumption that the
lifetime of the dam can be as long as 50 years, and additional O&M cost is $400 million in total.
Therefore, the cost of the system is low, while the capacity is large enough for our demand.
However, the PSH system has its own drawbacks: the round trip efficiency is only 75%,
much lower than the 90% of batteries. The environmental impact of the two huge reservoirs is
also a factor that must be taken into consideration.
Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) [21, 22]
12

In a CAES system, excess electricity is used to compress air and the high-pressure air is stored in
an underground cave; when electricity is required, the air is heated and runs a turbine to drive a
generator. Application of this technology began in the 20th century.
Current systems can reach a power capacity of 300 MW and energy capacity of 3000
MWh. A CAES project installed by Pacific Gas and Electric has a total value of $356 million,
and the projected lifetimes of such systems are often over 20 years. Therefore, the price per
energy stored is only 1.63 cents per kWh, even lower than batteries.
Besides the inconvenient fact that a vast underground space is required, additional fossil
fuel is often used to heat up the compressed air. This is a serious drawback that we need to
consider.
Other technologies [15]
There are other various kinds of energy storage technologies, but they are infeasible because of
the cost and other reasons. Here is a list of such ways:

Superconducting electromagnetic storage: requires cryogenic environment to work, too

expensive.

Pumped-thermal electricity storage (PTES): immature, still in development.

Flywheels (kinetic energy): too expensive, too massive.

Table 2. Prices and feasibility of different kinds of storage technologies

Storage
technology

Energy form

Price per Lifetime Price per Round-trip Feasibility

capacity (cycles) storage
efficiency
($/kWh)
(/kWh)

Batteries

Electrochemical

250

3,650

6.85

90%

Realistic

45,000

3,650

1233

95%

Plausible

18,250

0.30

75%

Realistic

Supercapacitors Electrostatic
PSH

Gravitational potential 55

13

CAES

Pneumatic potential

VI.

120

7,300

1.63

80%

Plausible

Summary and Discussion

In this paper, we approached the problem of storing wind and solar energy from a mostly
theoretical standpoint. We did not investigate the feasibility of integrating intermittent energy
sources into the grid power systems are not currently equipped to accommodate high levels of
intermittent generation, and might need to deploy a more flexible fossil-fueled generation fleet to
accomplish this. Instead, we simply assumed a power system run entirely on solar and/or wind
power. Though it is extremely unlikely that the United States will ever run off of these power
sources alone, it is still useful to investigate the physical and financial feasibility of these
hypothetical systems.
Our first step was to consider the possibility of powering an entire ISO using either only
wind or only solar photovoltaics. To do this, we scaled the actual power output from these
sources so that the integral of the output curve was equal to the integral of the load curve. We
then calculated the cost of storing any excess energy generated, to be used at times when demand
exceeded output. This involved researching the costs of different storage technologies. We found
that pumped-storage hydroelectricity and compressed air energy storage had the lowest cost per
kilowatt-hour of energy stored, but CAES requires a prohibitively large amount of time and
space to install, and since our scenario requires storing such a large amount of energy, the low
efficiency and limited supply of rivers mean PSH is not well-suited to the task. Taking all these
factors into consideration, we deemed batteries the most realistic method of large-scale energy
storage, and so we used the Tesla Powerpack in our calculations.
14

From our investigation, we concluded that the problem of storing excess energy means
that it is not currently feasible to power the United States only on wind and solar, even before
taking into account lack of transmission infrastructure and other factors. However, with newly
emerging storage technologies, it is not impossible to imagine a grid running on only intermittent
energy sources, especially since the prices of both generation and storage have been steadily
declining.

VII.

Acknowledgements

Our thanks to Elisabeth Moyer and Andrew Malone, for all they have done for us in GEOS
24705, and also to Kristian Ruud, the senior manager of MISO, for his generous help in our
project.

VIII.

Reference

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