Department of Land, Environment, Agriculture, and Forestry, University of Padova, Italy.
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA.
Sci Total Environ. 2020 Jun 1;719:137488. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.137488. Epub 2020 Feb 21.
Variable energy sources such as solar and runoff sources are intermittent in time and space, following their driving hydro-meteorological processes. Recent research has shown that in mountainous areas the combination of solar and hydropower has large potential (termed complementarity) to cover the temporal variability of the energy load and, by this mean, to facilitate integration of renewables into the electricity network. Climate change is causing widespread glacier retreat, and much attention is devoted to negative impacts such as diminishing water resources and shifts in runoff seasonality. However, the effects of glacier shrinkage on complementarity between hydropower and solar energy sources have been disregarded so far. This research aims at filling this gap. Data from the Eastern Italian Alps are used for the analysis. The Decision Scaling approach is used to analyze the electric energy system sensitivity and vulnerability to change in precipitation, temperature and glacier coverage. With this method, the electric energy system is first subject to a scenario-independent climate stress test, while projections from Regional Climate Models (RCMs) are then used to infer the likelihood of the future climate states and subsequently changes in complementarity of energy production. Results show that glacier shrinkage and increasing temperatures induced by climate change lead to a marked shift of seasonal hydropower production. As a consequence, the complementarity between hydropower and solar photovoltaic increases in a marked way in the basin with the largest original glacier coverage. Changes in complementarity are less significant in larger basins characterized by less glacier contribution.
像太阳能和径流水源等可变能源在时间和空间上是间歇性的，遵循其驱动的水文气象过程。最近的研究表明，在山区，太阳能和水力发电的结合具有很大的潜力（称为互补性），可以覆盖能源负荷的时间变化，并通过这种方式，促进可再生能源纳入电网。气候变化导致冰川大范围退缩，人们非常关注水资源减少和径流水季节性变化等负面影响。然而，到目前为止，冰川退缩对水力和太阳能资源之间互补性的影响尚未被忽视。本研究旨在填补这一空白。分析使用了来自意大利东部阿尔卑斯山的数据。决策缩放方法用于分析电力系统对降水、温度和冰川覆盖变化的敏感性和脆弱性。使用这种方法，电力系统首先要进行与情景无关的气候压力测试，然后使用区域气候模型（RCM）的预测来推断未来气候状态的可能性，以及随后能源生产互补性的变化。结果表明，冰川退缩和气候变化引起的温度升高导致季节性水力发电生产明显转移。因此，在原始冰川覆盖面积最大的流域，水力发电和太阳能光伏发电之间的互补性显著增加。在冰川贡献较小的较大流域，互补性的变化不太显著。
