Abstract
Extracting clean energy from renewable energy sources (RES) have become the only way to
replace the conventional energy sources that are considered source of green house gases
(GHG) including CO2. Solar and wind energy are the most important renewable energy
sources, and they have the big proportion of the total renewable energy. However, generating
energy from RES has many challenges one of the most important of which is the intermittent
nature of energy production of RES. For instance, solar energy depends immensely on the
temperature and solar irradiance. Wind energy also depends on the wind speed profile. The
weather conditions like temperature, irradiance, and wind profile are changes continuously
through the year. Consequently, that causes the dependant energy production of solar and
wind energy sources also changes and become inconsistent power sources. Literature
presents the problems yielded due to the intermittency of renewable energy sources and list
the proposed solution that helped countries that have a big production of wind energy like
Denmark to mitigate the intermittency of the wind energy source. This report presents the
technical, economical, and environmental impacts of intermittency of wind energy on the
grid and the load demand, in addition, it discusses the proposed solutions and approaches
to mitigate these challenges and how that can be applied to be useful for UK.
[Link]
The resent metrics of the British grid shown in Fig.1. shows the wind energy sources had the
largest share that was 30% of the total energy supplied to the grid in UK [1].
Fig.1. The grid electricity in 2024 [1].
Figure 2 charts the yearly wind energy generation in UK. The energy generation has been
increasing yearly to reach to 82.3 TWh what shows how wind energy is potential in UK.
Fig. 2. The annual wind energy generation (TWh) in UK [2]
Table 1 lists the cumulative capacity, generation, and the wind energy share of the total
British electricity. The numbers clearly prove the continuous increase in generation and
utilization of wind generation in UK. The potential of wind energy in UK comes from the fact
that, UK has 30% of the overall Europe’s offshore wind resources [3]. Not only that but also,
the UK offshore is the largest in Europe and records a high average wind speed. On the other
hand, a country like Denmark has a smaller geographical area and smaller offshore.
However, it has more wind energy generation and specially in offshore and the country has a
leadership role in wind generation. That is because Denmark has a remarkable history of
wind turbine technology and infrastructure of offshore wind. Getting the benefits of copying
the experience of leadership countries like Denmark, the generation of wind energy of UK
can be multiplied and become one of the leadership countries in wind energy generation
specially by having the wind potential that it has. Intermittence is one of the biggest
challenges of wind energy generation because of the dependency on the wind profile.
Therefore, mitigating the intermittence of wind energy can help immensely in maximizing the
utilization of the wind generation. Consequently, that will resolve the consequent effects
that caused by the intermittent nature of the wind energy.
Table 1: The British wind power capacity and generation
Year Cumulative Generation Capacity % of total Refs
factor %
capacity (GWh) (Onshore %, electricity
Offshore %) use
(MW)
2008 2,974 5,357 20.6 1.5 [4]
2009 4,051 6,904 19.5 2.01
2010 5,204 7,950 17.4 2.28
2011 6,540 12,675 22.1 3.81
2012 8,871 20,710 26.7 5.52
2013 10,976 24,500 25.5 7.39 [5]
2014 12,440 28,100 25.8 9.3 [6]
2015 13,602 40,442 33.9 11 [7]
2016 16,218 37,368 26.3 12 [8]
2017 19,837 49,607 28.5 17 [9-10]
2018 21,700 57,100 30 18 [11]
2019 23,950 64,134 32% 21 [12]
2020 24,485 75,369 ~35.5 24 [13]
(28, 46)
2021 25,730 64,460 ~29.3 21
(23, 37)
2022 28,759 80,162 (27.3, 41.1) 24.6 [14]
2023 30,116 82,002 (24.5, 39.7) 28.8 [2]
The remaining parts of this report are structured as follows: section 2 presents the
intermittency of wind energy causes and showing the case in UK. Section 3 introduces the
impacts of the intermittency of wind energy on environment, economics, and technical
impacts on the grid stability. Section 3 discuses the proposed solutions to mitigate the
challenges of the intermittency of wind energy specially the once whom the leadership wind
producing countries have followed to reach their leading position in generating wind energy.
Section 4 reports an estimate of benefits that UK can gain by applying these solutions and
approaches.
[Link] of wind energy
The intermittency of wind energy comes from the relationship between the wind mechanical
power P can be formulated as a function of the wind speed v as in (1).
𝑃 = 0.5 𝜌 𝐴 𝐶𝑝 𝑣 3 (1)
Where:
𝜌: the air density
𝐴: the swept area (𝑚2 )
𝐶𝑝 : coefficient of wind turbine
V: the wind velocity (m/s^2)
From this relationship between the mechanical power yielded by a wind turbine and the wind
speed, mechanical power is proportional to the cube of the wind speed. Studding the case
of the wind profile of UK, table 2 lists the variability of the onshore capacity factor in winter
and summer, daytime and overnight as well. The change in wind profile of seasons and
daytime and nighttime greatly affects the generation.
Table 2: Onshore capacity factor by season [15].
Daytime Overnight Overall
Winter 44% 36% 38%
Summer 31% 13% 20%
[Link] challenges of Intermittence of wind generation.
The intermittent nature of wind generation due to dependency on changeable
parameters i.e. the wind profile influences negatively the economic, environment, and
the technical problem.
3.1 Technical challenges
For every power system, there should be a balance between the load demand and the
supply of the wind energy. The intermittent nature of power generation of the wind energy
affects the system reserves and increases the uncertainty [16]. Figure 3 smartly
compares the reserve with intermittency and without counting the intermittency. The
comparison proves the increase of reserve due to the intermittency of the wind
generation due to changeable wind profile [16]. When it comes to system reliability, the
fluctuation in wind power generation due to the change in wind speed negatively impacts
the system reliability specially when the intermittency is negatively correlated to the load
demand. In another word, when the wind generation decreases at the peak time or
increases at the off-peak time of the demand [17].
Fig. 3. The effects of intermittency on the reserve requirement [17]
3.2 The environmental impacts of intermittency
Penetrating the wind power to power system would aim to reduce the CO2 emission.
However, the intermittency of wind generation should be compensated for system reliability
and security. That happened by using backup power sources of conventional sources that
increase the CO2 emission [18]. Many studies proved the penetration of fluctuated wind
generation reduces the system efficiency [19]. Millions of tons of CO2 emitted due to
intermittency of installed wind power generation in UK [70]. Studies researched the impacts
of penetrating renewable sources i.e. solar and wind on the CO2 emission. The numbers
listed in table 4 clearly shows the emitted CO2 as results of the intermittency of the
penetrated wind energy.
Table 4: Increase in specific CO2 emissions due to intermittent renewable energy
Study Region Penetration level Renewable energy type Average increased in
specific CO2
emissions of thermal
plants (%)
20 US Western Interconnection 33 Wind, Solar <1%
21 Germany 23/35 Wind, Solar 8.3/5.5
22 East Germany 11 Wind 7
23 Western US States 23 Wind, Solar 2.3
3.3. The economical impacts of the intermittency
Studies proved the levelized cost of power systems increased by increasing the penetration
of the wind power system due to maintaining system balance by installing energy storage to
compensate the intermittency of the generated power of the wind power system [24].
[Link] mitigation solutions
Many solutions and techniques presented in literature that helped to mitigate the impacts of
the intermittency of wind generation. Some of them are based on utilizing energy storage or
backup power source to compensate the missing power. Some other solutions are based on
adapting and changing the demanded power to match the available supply.
4.1. Energy storage and backup power source mitigation
These solutions are utilizing energy storage to maintain system frequency and regulate the
system voltage by matching between the load demand and the supply. In addition, it also
reducing the peak demand by combining the generation from wind with the energy storage.
Figure 4 depicts the scenario of complete day for the generation with and without combining
energy storage showed in red and blue colored line respectively. It shows the energy storage
changing happened at off-peak time and discharging to complement at peak time and
compensate the missing wind power due to intermittency [25]. Dozens of energy storage
systems ESS presented in literature utilized to mitigate the intermittency of the wind
generation including flywheel as in [26] and pump hydroelectric storage and hydrogen energy
storage as in [27].
Fig. 4. Mitigation of wind energy intermittency [28]
4.2 Demand and generation side mitigation
There are also a demand side mitigation approaches in which the load demand can be
reduced as much as the missing power of the wind generation [29]. A generation side
mitigation technique also presented in literature [30]. In this technique another reliable
power source plant is used to be backup to compensate the missing power due to
intermittency of the wind generation i.e. diesel or gas power plant can be used.
4.3. Interconnecting with international grid
Denmark is a good example of the top producers of wind energy that utilizes grid
interconnection with neighbouring countries like Germany, Norway, Sweden to allow import
and export electricity as needed through Nordic electricity market [31]. This solution helps
in realize flexibility of energy exchange and balancing load demand and supply which can
mitigate the intermittency of wind energy.
4.4. Forecasting wind profile and pattern
Denmark also invested and developed forecasting wind profile with high accuracy to pre-
calculate and count for the fluctuation in production [32]. This technique can help to
precisely sizing the wind power system and to balance between the load demand based on
the predicted wind power generation.
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This report presented the challenges and opportunities of the intermittency of wind energy
generation. It conducted a deep survey to present the negative impact of intermittency
problem on the environment, economic, and the grid. It found the more penetration of wind
energy the more emission of CO2, the more increase in levelized cost of energy, and
technical issues affecting system reliability and security. The report uses Denmark as an
example of a leadership in wind energy generation that leads UK in wind generation while it
has less potential of wind energy of that UK has. The report surveyed the solutions Denmark
utilized to mitigate the intermittency of wind energy generation for large scale. the concluded
approaches and techniques Denmark used over its long experience in wind generation
technology can be taken as a model to take UK to leadership position.
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