Can 100% renewable power system be successfully built?

• Published in: Renewable energy Vol. 177; pp. 715 - 722
• Main Authors: DaneshvarDehnavi, Saeed, Negri, Cesar A., Giesselmann, Michael G., Bayne, Stephen B., Wollenberg, Bruce
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01-11-2021
• Subjects: 100% Renewable; BESS; Monte Carlo simulation; Renewable energy resources; Solar energy; Wind energy; 100% Renewable; Wind energy; BESS; Renewable energy resources; Monte Carlo simulation; Solar energy
• ISSN: 0960-1481; 1879-0682
• DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2021.06.002

Global warming has been a critical issue in recent years. Many leaders and politicians have talked about replacing fossil fuels with Renewable Energy Resources (RES). Some of them even went further and are talking about running a country with 100% RES soon. Is that economically viable? What would be the estimated cost of such a system? In this paper, a city in west Texas with a 100 MW peak load has been assumed to operate with the wind, solar, and Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) totally disconnected from the grid for a cost evaluation. Real generation and load time series data are used to achieve an optimum combination of the installed capacity of those resources by minimizing the total overnight cost, respecting a maximum of 24 h of faults in which the system cannot provide the load during the period. A Monte Carlo simulation is applied to the previous results to evaluate the influence of faulty devices and increase the robustness of the system. The results for both cases are analyzed and compared. Finally, the total cost of install capacity will be compared with other non-renewable resources.
•Challenges of 100% isolated renewable system with wind, solar, and battery.•Algorithm to optimize the size and cost of system elements.•Effects of equipment failures for the designed system reliability.•Viability of the 100% system compared with other available technologies.