National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) researchers Wesley Cole, Nathaniel Gates, and Trieu Mai examined how changing the contribution of renewable energy from the optimal solution impacts the cost of building and operating the electricity system, as well as trade-offs between emissions savings and system costs for higher and lower levels of renewable generation.

The results, outlined in an Electricity Journal article, point to a nonlinear relationship between system costs and renewable energy contribution: Small deviations from the least-cost solution have minimal cost impacts, while larger deviations from the least-cost solution can result in large cost changes.

Limiting Renewable Energy Growth Would Result in Higher Power Costs | Devamı>>>