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，人们普遍预计未来将建设更多的产能。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，一个风力发电场能节省多少二氧化碳？”有一个令人惊讶的复杂答案，因为它不仅取决于农场生产多少电力，还取决于电力系统的其他部分如何对其生产做出反应。学者和政府机构过去的工作集中在计算平均排放量（以克为单位）英国整个电力部门在未来各种情况下的二氧化碳。该项目将是第一个了解风电边际排放的项目：在电力系统中增加或减少一个风电场会导致国家排放量的变化，这背后的驱动因素，以及如何利用这些因素来最大限度地节省能源。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都对风电场的输出做出同样的反应。我们必须确定当风力发电增加时，哪些特定的发电站会减少其输出：高碳煤还是低碳天然气？其次，更多的发电站将不得不部分负荷运行，以科普天气驱动的风力输出变化。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，从而对国家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造的其他发电站的结构，这些发电站在没有风的时候会有不同的排放。最后，为了提供排放的整体观点，我们必须考虑使用生命周期评估方法建造发电站或从地下开采化石燃料时排放的碳。我们将使用一系列技术来研究这些问题，这些技术智能地集成在几个学科中，以提供风力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中的基本问题，允许英国未来风电场组合的输出量化。2）对英国电力部门的排放进行最详细的估计，将每个发电站的输出与其可能的效率相结合，这些效率来自美国类似发电站的每小时排放数据（因为这些在英国没有报道）。3）开发统计回归技术，以发现这些排放量如何随风力输出水平而变化，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更多的风力发电而变化，以及这对排放意味着什么。5)开发一个全球电力系统的降阶模型，将这一分析复制给其他国家，以了解英国在利用风力发电减少排放方面的优势或劣势。我们的目标是了解影响投资风力发电减少排放的因素，以便最大限度地减少排放。能源储存、国际互联、准确的产量预测和高碳价都将有助于增加风力发电的减排量，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.