Curtailment (electricity)

In electric grid power generators, curtailment is the deliberate reduction in output below what could have been produced, in order to balance energy supply and demand or due to transmission constraints.[1][2][3] The definition is not strict, and several types of curtailment exist. "Economic dispatch" (low market price) is the most common.[4]

For other uses, see Curtailment.

Curtailment is a loss of potentially useful energy, and may impact Power Purchase Agreements.[5][6] However, utilizing all available energy may require costly methods such as building new power lines or storage, becoming more expensive than letting surplus power go unused.[7][8][9][10]

Examples
Curtailment in Texas

After ERCOT built a new transmission line from the Competitive Renewable Energy Zone in West Texas to the central cities in the Texas Interconnection in 2013, curtailment was reduced from 8-16% to near zero.[11]

In 2018, curtailment in the California grid was 460 GWh, or 0.2% of generation,[12] but increased since.[7][13] Curtailment of solar power mainly occurs at noon as part of the duck curve.[14]

Mitigation options

References
  1. Freehill-Maye, Lynn (8 October 2020). "California has a renewables curtailment problem. Can your Google and Facebook activity help?". Utility Dive. Archived from the original on 12 October 2020.
  2. Lori Bird, Jaquelin Cochran, and Xi Wang (March 2014). "Wind and Solar Energy Curtailment: Experience and Practices in the United States" (PDF). NREL. Archived (PDF) from the original on 1 September 2020. Curtailment is a reduction in the output of a generator from what it could otherwise produce given available resources, typically on an involuntary basisCS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. Lori Bird, Jaquelin Cochran, and Xi Wang (17 October 2014). "Wind and Solar Energy Curtailment Practices (brief)" (PDF). NREL. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 July 2017.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  4. Paulos, Bentham (3 April 2017). "Too Much of a Good Thing? An Illustrated Guide to Solar Curtailment on California's Grid". www.greentechmedia.com. Archived from the original on 26 September 2020. CAISO considers three types of curtailment: Economic dispatch, a self-scheduled cut, and exceptional dispatch. These can all happen at the local level, to reduce congestion, or at the system-wide level, to reduce oversupply.
  5. "How to Manage Curtailment in a Virtual Power Purchase Agreement". LevelTen Energy. 13 February 2019. Archived from the original on 7 August 2020.
  6. St. John, Jeff (26 November 2019). "Do Preventative Blackouts Put California's Renewable Generators at Risk?". www.greentechmedia.com. Archived from the original on 10 August 2020. PG&E will effectively shut down projects during public safety power shutoff (PSPS) events, and then not pay the developer for the lost production
  7. Specht, Mark (25 June 2019). "Renewable Energy Curtailment 101: The Problem That's Actually Not a Problem At All". Union of Concerned Scientists. Archived from the original on 1 September 2020. In most cases, it simply does not make economic sense to build all the infrastructure (e.g. transmission lines or energy storage) that would be required to utilize every last drop of renewable electricity
  8. Elliott, Dave (10 July 2019). "Curtailment: losing green power". Physics World. Archived from the original on 7 August 2020.
  9. http://www.powermarkets.org/uploads/4/7/9/3/47931529/calif_curtailment_as_published.pdf
  10. "Curtailment of low-cost renewables a cost-effective alternative to 'seasonal' energy storage". Clean Power Research. 13 February 2019. Archived from the original on 13 August 2020.
  11. Wiser, Ryan H., and Mark Bolinger. "2014 Wind Technologies Market Report" page 38. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, August 2015.
  12. Victor, David G. (21 May 2019). "Pumped Energy Storage: Vital to California's Renewable Energy Future" (PDF). p. 4, 12-15.
  13. "California ISO - Managing Oversupply". www.caiso.com. Archived from the original on 14 October 2020.
  14. Pyper, Julia (9 May 2019). "Electric Ridesharing Benefits the Grid, and EVgo Has the Data to Prove It". www.greentechmedia.com. Archived from the original on 18 October 2020. the cumulative annual load profile by hour of LDV fleets using its fast charging network — with rideshare vehicles currently making up the lion’s share on a gigawatt-hour basis — aligns with the cumulative solar curtailment by hour on the CAISO system
  15. http://www.cs.albany.edu/~cchelmis/pubs/energy15b.pdf
  16. Zheng, Jiajia; Chien, Andrew A.; Suh, Sangwon (October 2020). "Mitigating Curtailment and Carbon Emissions through Load Migration between Data Centers". Joule. 4 (10): 2208–2222. doi:10.1016/j.joule.2020.08.001. load migration within the existing data center capacity during the curtailment hours in CAISO has the potential to reduce 113–239 KtCO 2e per year of GHG emissions and absorb up to 62% of the total curtailment with negative abatement costs in 2019
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