Maximising the Carbon Impact of Wind Power

近年来，英国在风力发电方面投入了大量资金，人们普遍预计，英国未来将建设更多的风力发电能力。其中一个驱动原因是减少碳排放，但目前还没有深入研究风力发电在实现这一目标方面的有效性。一个简单的问题是“风力发电场能节省多少二氧化碳？”这个问题的答案出人意料地复杂，因为它不仅取决于农场生产了多少电力，还取决于电力系统的其他部分如何响应其生产。学术界和政府机构过去的工作集中在计算整个英国电力部门在各种未来情景下的平均排放量（单位电力的二氧化碳克数）。这个项目将是第一个了解风力发电边际排放的项目：在电力系统中增加或减少一个风力发电场对国家排放量的影响，其背后的驱动因素，以及如何利用这些因素来最大限度地节约能源。每台涡轮机节省的二氧化碳越多，需要建造的涡轮机就越少，消费者和英国经济的成本就越低。这项详细的研究是必要的，因为并非所有的发电站对风力发电场的输出都有相同的反应。我们必须确定，当风力发电增加时，哪些电厂会减少发电量：高碳煤还是低碳气？其次，更多的发电站将不得不部分负荷运行，以应对天气导致的风力输出的变化。我们必须了解这种影响有多大，它对电站效率的影响有多大，从而对全国排放量的影响有多大。第三，对风力发电的大规模投资将改变其他行业选择建设的其他发电站的结构，而这些发电站在不刮风的时候会产生不同的排放。最后，为了提供排放的整体视图，我们必须考虑使用生命周期评估方法从地下开采化石燃料或建造发电站时排放的碳。我们将使用一系列跨多个学科的智能集成技术来研究这些问题，以给出由风取代的排放的完整的整体系统图，并且：1)解决使用再分析天气数据来模拟历史风电场输出的新兴领域的基本问题，允许英国未来风电场组合的输出被量化。2)根据美国类似电站的每小时排放数据（因为英国没有报告这些数据），将每个电站的发电量与它们可能的效率结合起来，对英国电力部门的排放做出最详细的估计。3)发展统计回归技术，以发现这些排放量如何随风力输出水平、燃料和碳价格以及风力预测的准确性而变化。4)采用未来电力系统的工程和经济模型来研究投资和运营决策如何随着风能的增加而变化，以及这对排放意味着什么。5)开发一个全球电力系统的简化模型，将这一分析复制到其他国家，以询问英国在利用风力发电减少排放方面是处于有利还是不利的地位。我们的目标是了解通过投资风力发电而影响减排的因素，从而使这些减排得以最大化。能源储存、国际互联、准确的产出预测和高碳价格都将有助于增加风能的减排，我们将量化每一项的影响。

The UK has invested heavily in wind power in recent years, and is widely expected to build much more capacity in future. One of the driving reasons is to reduce carbon emissions, but there has been no in-depth study of how effective wind power has been, or will be, at achieving this. The simple question of 'how much carbon dioxide does a wind farm save?' has a surprisingly complex answer as it depends not just on how much power the farm produces, but on how the rest of the electricity system responds to its production.Past work by academics and government bodies has concentrated on calculating the average emissions (in grams of carbon dioxide per unit of electricity) from the entire UK power sector in various future scenarios. This project will be the first to understand the marginal emissions from wind power: the change in national emissions from adding one more or one less wind farm to the power system, the driving factors behind this, and how those factors can be used to maximise the savings. The more carbon dioxide that each turbine saves, the fewer turbines will have to be built, and the lower the cost to consumers and the UK economy. This detailed study is necessary because not all power stations respond equally to the output from wind farms. We must identify which specific power stations reduce their output when wind generation increases: high-carbon coal or lower-carbon gas? Secondly, more power stations will have to run part-loaded to cope with the weather-driven variability in wind output. We must understand how large this effect is, how great an impact it has on station efficiency and thus on national emissions. Third, large-scale investment in wind power will change the mix of other power stations that the rest of the industry chooses to build, and those stations will have different emissions at times when the wind is not blowing. Finally, to provide a holistic view of emissions we must consider the carbon emitted when power stations are built or fossil fuels are extracted from the ground using Life Cycle Assessment methodology. We will investigate these issues using a range of techniques intelligently integrated across several academic disciplines to give a complete whole-systems picture of the emissions displaced by wind, and: 1) Address fundamental problems in the emerging field of using reanalysis weather data to simulate historic wind farm outputs, allowing the output from the UK's future mix of wind farms to be quantified.2) Produce the most detailed estimation of British power sector emissions, combining the output from every power station with their likely efficiency, derived from hourly emissions data from similar stations in the US (as these are not reported in Britain).3) Develop statistical regression techniques to discover how these emissions vary with the level of wind output, with fuel and carbon prices, and the accuracy of the wind forecast.4) Employ both engineering and economic models of the future electricity system to investigate how investment and operating decisions change with more wind power, and what this will mean for emissions. 5) Develop a reduced-order model of the global electricity system to replicate this analysis for other countries to ask whether the UK is well- or badly-placed to reduce emissions with wind power.Our aim is to understand the factors that affect the emissions savings from investing in wind power, so that these savings can be maximised. Energy storage, international interconnections, accurate output forecasts and a high carbon price will all help to increase the emissions savings from wind power, and we will quantify the effects of each.