IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v109y2017icp324-336.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Biogas plants and surplus generation: Cost driver or reducer in the future German electricity system?

Author

Listed:
  • Lauer, Markus
  • Thrän, Daniela

Abstract

The proportion of (intermittent) renewable energy in the German electricity system is set to continuously increase over the next decades. This brings along with it the challenge of balancing demand and supply. For this paper, we analyzed the cost efficiency of reducing surplus generation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the German electricity system for the period of 2016–2035 through (flexible) biogas plants, taking into consideration different biogas extension paths and modes of operation. We assessed flexible power generation in biogas plants using a quotient of remuneration and surplus generation called the average integration costs of surplus generation (AICSG). We defined the AICSG, which can be interpreted as a new approach to assess and to compare the cost efficiency of flexibility options. Increasing the capacities of flexible biogas plants decreases future surplus generation by up to 35% compared to if these installments were phased out. The best AICSG value was generated in a scenario that had a low rate of constructing new biogas plants. In conclusion, the system integration of intermittent renewable energies requires further technologies that result in additional costs. Therefore, biogas plants are one option for improving the system integration of intermittent renewable energies.

Suggested Citation

  • Lauer, Markus & Thrän, Daniela, 2017. "Biogas plants and surplus generation: Cost driver or reducer in the future German electricity system?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 324-336.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:109:y:2017:i:c:p:324-336
    DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2017.07.016
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421517304470
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.enpol.2017.07.016?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lykidi, Maria & Gourdel, Pascal, 2015. "How to manage flexible nuclear power plants in a deregulated electricity market from the point of view of social welfare?," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 167-180.
    2. Gawel, Erik & Purkus, Alexandra, 2013. "Promoting the market and system integration of renewable energies through premium schemes: A case study of the German market premium," UFZ Discussion Papers 4/2013, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Division of Social Sciences (ÖKUS).
    3. Batalla-Bejerano, Joan & Trujillo-Baute, Elisa, 2016. "Impacts of intermittent renewable generation on electricity system costs," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 411-420.
    4. Hirth, Lion & Ueckerdt, Falko & Edenhofer, Ottmar, 2015. "Integration costs revisited – An economic framework for wind and solar variability," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 925-939.
    5. Szarka, Nora & Scholwin, Frank & Trommler, Marcus & Fabian Jacobi, H. & Eichhorn, Marcus & Ortwein, Andreas & Thrän, Daniela, 2013. "A novel role for bioenergy: A flexible, demand-oriented power supply," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 18-26.
    6. Schill, Wolf-Peter, 2014. "Residual load, renewable surplus generation and storage requirements in Germany," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 65-79.
    7. Hartner, Michael & Ortner, André & Hiesl, Albert & Haas, Reinhard, 2015. "East to west – The optimal tilt angle and orientation of photovoltaic panels from an electricity system perspective," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 94-107.
    8. Alizadeh, M.I. & Parsa Moghaddam, M. & Amjady, N. & Siano, P. & Sheikh-El-Eslami, M.K., 2016. "Flexibility in future power systems with high renewable penetration: A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 1186-1193.
    9. Pascal Gourdel & Maria Lykidi, 2015. "How to manage flexible nuclear power plants in a deregulated electricity market from the point of view of social welfare?," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) hal-01477134, HAL.
    10. Brouwer, Anne Sjoerd & van den Broek, Machteld & Zappa, William & Turkenburg, Wim C. & Faaij, André, 2016. "Least-cost options for integrating intermittent renewables in low-carbon power systems," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 48-74.
    11. Becker, Sarah & Frew, Bethany A. & Andresen, Gorm B. & Jacobson, Mark Z. & Schramm, Stefan & Greiner, Martin, 2015. "Renewable build-up pathways for the US: Generation costs are not system costs," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 437-445.
    12. Papaefthymiou, G. & Dragoon, Ken, 2016. "Towards 100% renewable energy systems: Uncapping power system flexibility," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 69-82.
    13. Ueckerdt, Falko & Hirth, Lion & Luderer, Gunnar & Edenhofer, Ottmar, 2013. "System LCOE: What are the costs of variable renewables?," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 61-75.
    14. DeCarolis, Joseph F. & Keith, David W., 2005. "The Costs of Wind's Variability: Is There a Threshold?," The Electricity Journal, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 69-77.
    15. Gawel, Erik & Purkus, Alexandra, 2013. "Promoting the market and system integration of renewable energies through premium schemes—A case study of the German market premium," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 599-609.
    16. Huber, Matthias & Weissbart, Christoph, 2015. "On the optimal mix of wind and solar generation in the future Chinese power system," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 90(P1), pages 235-243.
    17. Tafarte, Philip & Das, Subhashree & Eichhorn, Marcus & Thrän, Daniela, 2014. "Small adaptations, big impacts: Options for an optimized mix of variable renewable energy sources," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 80-92.
    18. Pascal Gourdel & Maria Lykidi, 2015. "How to manage flexible nuclear power plants in a deregulated electricity market from the point of view of social welfare?," Post-Print hal-01477134, HAL.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Markus Lauer & Daniela Thrän, 2018. "Flexible Biogas in Future Energy Systems—Sleeping Beauty for a Cheaper Power Generation," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-24, March.
    2. Lauer, Markus & Leprich, Uwe & Thrän, Daniela, 2020. "Economic assessment of flexible power generation from biogas plants in Germany's future electricity system," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 1471-1485.
    3. Yiyun Liu & Jun Wu & Jianjun Li & Jingjing Huang, 2023. "The Diffusion Rule of Demand-Oriented Biogas Supply in Distributed Renewable Energy System: An Evolutionary Game-Based Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(19), pages 1-16, September.
    4. Balibrea-Iniesta, José & Rodríguez-Monroy, Carlos & Núñez-Guerrero, Yilsy María, 2021. "Economic analysis of the German regulation for electrical generation projects from biogas applying the theory of real options," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 231(C).
    5. Lauven, Lars-Peter & Geldermann, Jutta & Desideri, Umberto, 2019. "Estimating the revenue potential of flexible biogas plants in the power sector," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 402-410.
    6. Dotzauer, Martin & Pfeiffer, Diana & Lauer, Markus & Pohl, Marcel & Mauky, Eric & Bär, Katharina & Sonnleitner, Matthias & Zörner, Wilfried & Hudde, Jessica & Schwarz, Björn & Faßauer, Burkhardt & Dah, 2019. "How to measure flexibility – Performance indicators for demand driven power generation from biogas plants," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 135-146.
    7. Weinand, Jann & McKenna, Russell & Karner, Katharina & Braun, Lorenz & Herbes, Carsten, 2018. "Assessing the potential contribution of excess heat from biogas plants towards decarbonising German residential heating," Working Paper Series in Production and Energy 31, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Institute for Industrial Production (IIP).
    8. Parvez, Ashak Mahmud & Lewis, Jonathan David & Afzal, Muhammad T., 2021. "Potential of industrial hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) for bioenergy production in Canada: Status, challenges and outlook," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Philip Tafarte & Marcus Eichhorn & Daniela Thrän, 2019. "Capacity Expansion Pathways for a Wind and Solar Based Power Supply and the Impact of Advanced Technology—A Case Study for Germany," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-23, January.
    2. Zipp, Alexander, 2017. "The marketability of variable renewable energy in liberalized electricity markets – An empirical analysis," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 1111-1121.
    3. Matsuo, Yuhji & Endo, Seiya & Nagatomi, Yu & Shibata, Yoshiaki & Komiyama, Ryoichi & Fujii, Yasumasa, 2018. "A quantitative analysis of Japan's optimal power generation mix in 2050 and the role of CO2-free hydrogen," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 165(PB), pages 1200-1219.
    4. Lauven, Lars-Peter & Geldermann, Jutta & Desideri, Umberto, 2019. "Estimating the revenue potential of flexible biogas plants in the power sector," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 402-410.
    5. Matsuo, Yuhji & Endo, Seiya & Nagatomi, Yu & Shibata, Yoshiaki & Komiyama, Ryoichi & Fujii, Yasumasa, 2020. "Investigating the economics of the power sector under high penetration of variable renewable energies," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 267(C).
    6. Zerrahn, Alexander, 2017. "Wind Power and Externalities," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 245-260.
    7. Dotzauer, Martin & Pfeiffer, Diana & Lauer, Markus & Pohl, Marcel & Mauky, Eric & Bär, Katharina & Sonnleitner, Matthias & Zörner, Wilfried & Hudde, Jessica & Schwarz, Björn & Faßauer, Burkhardt & Dah, 2019. "How to measure flexibility – Performance indicators for demand driven power generation from biogas plants," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 135-146.
    8. Ruhang Xu & Zhilin Liu & Zhuangzhuang Yu, 2019. "Exploring the Profitability and Efficiency of Variable Renewable Energy in Spot Electricity Market: Uncovering the Locational Price Disadvantages," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(14), pages 1-30, July.
    9. Alexandra G. Papadopoulou & George Vasileiou & Alexandros Flamos, 2020. "A Comparison of Dispatchable RES Technoeconomics: Is There a Niche for Concentrated Solar Power?," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(18), pages 1-22, September.
    10. Dong, Zhe & Liu, Miao & Zhang, Zuoyi & Dong, Yujie & Huang, Xiaojin, 2019. "Automatic generation control for the flexible operation of multimodular high temperature gas-cooled reactor plants," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 11-31.
    11. Alhadhrami, Saeed & Soto, Gabriel J & Lindley, Ben, 2023. "Dispatch analysis of flexible power operation with multi-unit small modular reactors," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 280(C).
    12. Srikanth Reddy & Lokesh Panwar & Bijaya Ketan Panigrahi & Rajesh Kumar & Lalit Goel & Ameena Saad Al-Sumaiti, 2020. "A profit-based self-scheduling framework for generation company energy and ancillary service participation in multi-constrained environment with renewable energy penetration," Energy & Environment, , vol. 31(4), pages 549-569, June.
    13. Dagoumas, Athanasios S. & Koltsaklis, Nikolaos E., 2019. "Review of models for integrating renewable energy in the generation expansion planning," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 242(C), pages 1573-1587.
    14. May, Nils, 2017. "The impact of wind power support schemes on technology choices," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 343-354.
    15. Reichenberg, Lina & Hedenus, Fredrik & Odenberger, Mikael & Johnsson, Filip, 2018. "The marginal system LCOE of variable renewables – Evaluating high penetration levels of wind and solar in Europe," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 914-924.
    16. Hu, Jing & Harmsen, Robert & Crijns-Graus, Wina & Worrell, Ernst & van den Broek, Machteld, 2018. "Identifying barriers to large-scale integration of variable renewable electricity into the electricity market: A literature review of market design," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 81(P2), pages 2181-2195.
    17. Mauro Lafratta & Matthew Leach & Rex B. Thorpe & Mark Willcocks & Eve Germain & Sabeha K. Ouki & Achame Shana & Jacquetta Lee, 2021. "Economic and Carbon Costs of Electricity Balancing Services: The Need for Secure Flexible Low-Carbon Generation," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(16), pages 1-21, August.
    18. Crampes, Claude & Renault, Jérôme, 2018. "Supply flexibility in electricity markets," TSE Working Papers 18-964, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    19. Koltsaklis, Nikolaos E. & Dagoumas, Athanasios S. & Panapakidis, Ioannis P., 2017. "Impact of the penetration of renewables on flexibility needs," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 360-369.
    20. Philip Tafarte & Annedore Kanngießer & Martin Dotzauer & Benedikt Meyer & Anna Grevé & Markus Millinger, 2020. "Interaction of Electrical Energy Storage, Flexible Bioenergy Plants and System-friendly Renewables in Wind- or Solar PV-dominated Regions," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-25, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:109:y:2017:i:c:p:324-336. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.