HydroBalance Policy Brief 1/2016:

Hydrobalancing challenges on three levels

Conclusions:

• Hydrobalancing services from Norway will largely depend on the EU development of a system for exchanging and valuing balancing services from renewable sources such as hydropower
• The right drivers need to be in place at the Norwegian national level
• A major barrier is currently the need of comprehensive political strategies and necessary measures to realize increased hydrobalancing from Norway
• Measures such as community compensation and early involvement may enhance community acceptance

In sum, it is recommend to formulate a policy strategy that encompass and balance different societal interests. This should be done both at the national and local levels with provisioning of guidelines for coordination of different plans, regulations and interests of relevant water resource and grid development needs. Such a comprehensive strategy should further address the political-, economic-, societal- and technological trends, which will impact upon relevant European countries’ demands. 

National stakeholders, who potentially could influence the national policies on hydrobalancing, did not at a large scale demand such a development beyond the interconnectors that currently are realized. Given the number of barriers, extensive hydrobalancing from Norway appears to be an unrealistic idea in the near future.

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HydroBalance Policy Brief 2/2016:

Cost of flexible generation and storage 

Main findings:

This work has analysed the cost of providing flexible generation from Norwegian pumped hydro plants as an alternative to thermal “backup” power plants in a European power system with high penetration of wind and solar power. The well-established method of Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) has been applied with some modifications to represent pumped hydro in a realistic way. 

The results from the case study gives clear indications that building new reversible pumping stations between existing reservoirs in the Norwegian hydro system can be economical advantageous over new flexible thermal generation in Northern Europe, even when including additional costs of subsea cables across the North Sea and corresponding reinforcements of the mainland grid. 

Key take-away from the cost analysis are: 

• Conventional hydropower is cheapest flexible generation technology 
• For a combination of unfavourable pumping price and load factor, pumped hydro becomes more expensive than gas power. Otherwise, pumped hydro from Norway is preferable, even when taking into account sea cables and grid upgrades for connection to the European market
• The cost of electricity from coal power plants with carbon capture and from nuclear power has a high spread due to big uncertainties in investment and decommissioning costs

As with all types of economic analyses and comparisons, the results are of course determined from the assumptions and data that have been used. To build confidence in the method and results, it is necessary to perform sensitivity analysis on critical parameters and let the model simplifications and presumptions be as transparent as possible. With respect to this work, the interested reader can use the developed Excel model herself, adjusting any parameter to see the effect on LCOE. 

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Les også HydroBalance Policy Brief 3/2016 >

Kontaktpersoner

Atle Harby,  Michael Belsnes, Oddgeir Andersen (policy brief 1/2016), Magnus Korpås (policy brief 2/2016)

• 9 november 2016
• Number of views: 5041