Identifying, Characterizing, and Mitigating Wind and Solar Resource Shortages Across the Continental United States

Abstract

Many plans for decarbonizing society envision future electricity systems that are heavily reliant on wind and solar generation. However, wind and solar resources are variable, and supplying energy reliably and cost effectively requires the use of other technologies. In particular, recent studies suggest that the energy infrastructure capacities required for reliably meeting electricity demand in wind- and solar-heavy electricity systems can be determined by rare periods of particularly low wind and solar power generation. Thus, it is important to better understand the characteristics of such resource shortage events. Better understanding of shortage characteristics can help develop and evaluate methods, such as energy technology development, transmission infrastructure deployment, and demand response, that can reduce the costs of reliably providing wind and solar energy during shortage events. In this work, we identify renewable energy shortages from 1980–2020 with geographical resolution across the continental United States by simulating the operation of cost-optimal systems that use wind and solar power and energy storage to reliably supply electricity. We then explore the characteristics of identified shortages and cost-optimal system operation, and quantify the potential value and limits of approaches that could mitigate the impacts of such shortage events.