Synergies and trade-offs between storage, transmission, and sector coupling in high renewable energy systems
Why this work is in the frame
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
Energy storage, transmission, and sector coupling are some prominent flexibility solutions to support variable renewable energy (VRE) integration. However, investment cost uncertainties and public acceptance could hamper the deployment of these flexibility solutions. This raises questions about the development and cost-effectiveness of future energy systems, especially on how the dependence on local and cross-border solutions of flexibility would evolve if the uptake of these solutions is restricted. In this context, this paper identifies the synergies among flexibility options under restrictions on transmission expansion or increased costs of energy storage. It contributes to determining whether investments in energy storage and/or transmission expansion offer the least-cost transition and investigates the impact of sector coupling on these solutions. A long-term energy system planning and optimisation model towards 2050 is developed using the open-source energy system optimisation tool Balmorel, and a case study of the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea and the North Sea is established. Five cases with restrictions imposed on transmission expansion and higher energy storage technology costs are analysed at different levels of sector coupling. The results highlight the importance of transmission expansion at all levels of sector coupling. As the level of sector coupling increases, uncertainties around the cost of energy storage drive the least-cost pathways. Optimal investment solutions are found to have a mix of transmission and energy storage in capacity expansion at all levels of sector coupling. • Restrictions on transmission expansion and higher energy storage costs are modelled. • From medium sector coupling and above, storage cost uncertainty significantly impacts system cost. • Restricting transmission expansion increases system costs across all sector coupling levels. • Offshore transmission expansion is a viable option when onshore projects face public opposition. • Transmission expansion and energy storage investments show an inverse relationship.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it