For our columnist Maxence Cordiez, associate energy and climate expert at the Institut Montaigne, if renewable electrical energies have an important role to play in decarbonization, their deployment must be accompanied by the development of the flexibilities necessary for their integration.
France – like the rest of Europe – is committed to achieving carbon neutrality in 2050. This is an imperative to limit global global warming to less than 2°C and, thereby even limit the effects on ecosystems and our societies. Achieving this objective requires an in-depth review of our energy system in order to move away from fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – which still constitute around 80% of the energy consumed globally.
Even in France, these fuels provide around 60% of the energy consumed, starting with oil (mainly in transport) and gas (particularly for heating and industry). However, French electricity is already little dependent on imported fossil fuels and emits little greenhouse gases, thanks to nuclear, hydraulic, wind and solar energy. To achieve carbon neutrality in 2050, that is to say not emit more greenhouse gases than what ecosystems and possible future carbon capture and storage systems can absorb, France is has a National Low Carbon Strategy (SNBC).
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The SNBC forecasts an increase in the use of electricity compared to now, both in absolute value (France in 2050 should consume more electricity than today) and in relative terms. If electricity currently accounts for a quarter of the energy consumed in France, it should increase to reach around 55% in 2050. This is explained by the fact that it is much easier to produce electricity. low-carbon electricity than low-carbon liquid and gaseous fuels, although it will be necessary.
From then on, two direct conclusions follow: it is necessary to promote the uses of electricity and at the same time increase the production of low-carbon electricity. The new power plants (nuclear and renewable) should be sufficient both to renew some of the current power plants and to increase electricity production. In other words: the deployment of new production capacities will have to be massive in the decades to come. But that’s not going to be enough… and that’s where the problem lies!
Make the electrical system more flexible
Indeed, while most of the electricity production units were until now controllable (fossil, nuclear and hydraulic) and they adapted to an inflexible demand, part of the new capacities depend on external conditions: the wind for wind power and sun for photovoltaic panels. It is therefore necessary to make the electrical system more flexible at the same time as installing these capacities in order to get the most out of them and avoid destabilizing the system. This flexibility will come a little from production, but increasingly from demand and storage.
Integrating photovoltaic solar – which produces every day from the middle of the day to the end of the afternoon – requires flexibility on the scale of a few hours. This can be provided on the demand side by updating peak and off-peak rates (HP/HC) in order to refocus peak hours on the times when the network is really most tense. We could imagine, for example, having two periods of off-peak hours (at night and in the afternoon), more off-peak hours but more expensive peak hours (which would encourage more consumption during off-peak hours, while reducing the effort to achieve this).
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The competitiveness of HP/HC rates compared to fixed rates could also be increased. On the storage side, there is an urgent need to develop bidirectional charging of electric vehicles, which implies standardization of the system on a European scale and support for the deployment of such terminals and vehicles. Thus, equipped households could use their car’s battery to avoid peak hours. With an average household consuming around 6 kWh of electricity per day and an electric vehicle battery often having a capacity greater than 50 kWh, its domestic use for a few hours would drain it little, while still providing an important service to the network.
Inter-seasonal flexibility
Integrating wind power requires weekly flexibility, that is to say of the order of several days. To do this, a certain number of hydroelectric dams could be converted into reversible dams allowing electricity to be stored on this time scale. France has potential, but this would require overcoming two major obstacles: the question of concessions (carrying out work requires renewed competition, etc.) and the acceptability of the population, the subject of water having become particularly sensitive in recent years. years.
On the demand side, TEMPO-type rates offering three types of days in the year (300 very inexpensive blue days, 43 inexpensive white days and 22 very expensive red days) also contribute to weekly flexibility in winter.
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Finally, as electricity consumption is higher in winter than in summer due to heating, interseasonal flexibility is also necessary. This is already provided by nuclear electricity via the positioning of reactor shutdowns for maintenance and refueling in summer. This service is all the more valuable as there are few other demonstrated levers of interseasonal flexibility that have significant potential without resorting to fossil fuels…
Thus, if renewable electrical energies have an important role to play in decarbonization, their deployment must be accompanied by the development of the flexibilities necessary for their integration. Without this, the electricity system will be increasingly unbalanced – we are already seeing this – which is economically and ecologically sub-optimal and ultimately threatens security of supply.
