Transcript Met Office
Climate variability and renewable energy – Hadley Centre activities Hazel E. Thornton Policy and research links The Hadley Centre has begun working more closely with the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to provide scientific support for energy policy development. A multi year research plan to provide useful climate related information to DECC is being developed looking across the different renewable energy types. Preliminary activities have concentrated on wind energy production as this will be the major component of the UK’s future renewable energy mix in the near future. Better wind information is required by many different DECC policy areas highlighting a need for improved understanding of wind speed characteristics across the UK and Europe both historically and into the future. The links between energy policy area and research requirement are shown. Ensuring a resilient power supply under severe winter conditions The extended anticyclonic blocking periods that occurred during the winters of 2009 and 2010, brought low wind speeds and temperatures and high energy demand. DECC want to understand the significance of such events for power resilience in a future with an increased dependence on wind power production. • DECC’s 2050 Calculator: a tool to investigate future energy balancing options out to 2050. It includes a weather stress test to ensure any proposed energy generation mixes are resilient to problematic weather conditions. • The validity of this stress test under current conditions has been assessed though analysis of the frequency and severity of UK wide 5 day mean temperatures and wind speeds using ERA interim. • Stress test example period:2nd - 6th Feb 2007 when high energy demand and low wind speeds in Ireland The relationship between UK wide 5 day mean temperature and wind speeds during the ERA interim period, winter (black), spring (green), summer (red) and autumn (orange). The stress test event is shown by the large black dot. • There is considerable range in 5 day mean temperature and wind speed periods between 1979 and 2011, with winter showing the greatest range in wind speeds and the lowest temperatures while in summer the lowest wind speeds and warmest temperatures are observed. Severity and duration of low wind, low temperature periods • Five day periods during December 2010 were some of the most extreme, with average wind speeds of 5.5m/s and temperatures of 0.4ºC. • The frequency and severity of different duration wind speed and temperature periods have been analysed. Conditions similar or more severe than the stress test occurred on average between once every two and ten years, depending on how the comparison is made. • The stress test period is relatively extreme when concurrent wind speed and temperature conditions are considered, with only 0.6% of five day periods in the 33 year record having both lower wind speeds and temperatures. • Once during the 33 year period studied, a 14 day event had similar or more severe temperature and wind speed conditions than the 5 day stress test. • A one hundred year return period low wind event has a mean wind speed of between 2.8 ± 0.4m/s and 3.2 ± 0.4m/s. • We are working with DECC to understand what these findings imply for the formulation of a future stress test. The average annual frequency of different length UK wide low wind periods for a range of wind speed thresholds. Each day in the period must have a daily mean wind speed that is less than the chosen percentile of the ERA interim daily mean wind speed distribution. Future work • Will assess the joint probability of low wind and temperature periods, their forcing mechanisms, longer term variability, spatial extent across the UK and Europe and an exploration of how they are projected to change under climate change. Generalised Pareto distribution fitted to negated 5 day mean wind speeds less than 4.8m/s. • Other policy relevant science for both wind and alternative renewable types will be undertaken, using and assessing the skill of the seamless prediction system at the Met Office to investigate the different timescales of interest. Met Office Hadley Centre, FitzRoy Road, Exeter, Devon, EX1 3PB United Kingdom Tel: 01392 885680 Fax: 01392 885681 Email: [email protected] © Crown © Crown copyright copyright 2012 07/0XXX 12/0556 Met Office and the Met Office logo are registered trademarks