Curtailing Intermittent Generation in Electrical Systems

Energy generation from intermittent renewable sources introduces additional variability into electrical systems, resulting in a higher cost of balancing against the increased variabilities. Ways to balance demand and supply for electricity include using flexible generation resources, storage operations, and curtailing intermittent generation. This paper focuses on the operational and environmental impact of curtailing intermittent generation. We construct a stochastic dynamic optimization model that captures the critical components of the system operating cost and analyze how various generation resources should operate with and without curtailing intermittent generation. We find that the system cost reduction per unit of curtailed energy is consistently significant, and the presence of storage may increase the cost saving per unit of curtailed energy. We also find that curtailing intermittent generation often leads to system emission reductions.