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Modern wind turbines already represent a tightly optimized confluence of materials science and aerodynamic engineering. Veers et al. review the challenges and opportunities for further expanding this technology, with an emphasis on the need for interdisciplinary collaboration. They highlight the need to better understand atmospheric physics in the regions where taller turbines will operate as well as the materials constraints associated with the scale-up. The mutual interaction of turbine sites with one another and with the evolving features of the overall electricity grid will furthermore necessitate a systems approach to future development. Science , this issue p. eaau2027 Harvested by advanced technical systems honed over decades of research and development, wind energy has become a mainstream energy resource. However, continued innovation is needed to realize the potential of wind to serve the global demand for clean energy. Here, we outline three interdependent, cross-disciplinary grand challenges underpinning this research endeavor. The first is the need for a deeper understanding of the physics of atmospheric flow in the critical zone of plant operation. The second involves science and engineering of the largest dynamic, rotating machines in the world. The third encompasses optimization and control of fleets of wind plants working synergistically within the electricity grid. Addressing these challenges could enable wind power to provide as much as half of our global electricity needs and perhaps beyond.

This article provides consolidated estimates of water withdrawal and water consumption for the full life cycle of selected electricity generating technologies, which includes component manufacturing, fuel acquisition, processing, and transport, and power plant operation and decommissioning. Estimates were gathered through a broad search of publicly available sources, screened for quality and relevance, and harmonized for methodological differences. Published estimates vary substantially, due in part to differences in production pathways, in defined boundaries, and in performance parameters. Despite limitations to available data, we find that: water used for cooling of thermoelectric power plants dominates the life cycle water use in most cases; the coal, natural gas, and nuclear fuel cycles require substantial water per megawatt-hour in most cases; and, a substantial proportion of life cycle water use per megawatt-hour is required for the manufacturing and construction of concentrating solar, geothermal, photovoltaic, and wind power facilities. On the basis of the best available evidence for the evaluated technologies, total life cycle water use appears lowest for electricity generated by photovoltaics and wind, and highest for thermoelectric generation technologies. This report provides the foundation for conducting water use impact assessments of the power sector while also identifying gaps in data that could guide future research.

A vast majority of PV panel suppliers declare a PV panel lifetime in the range of 20-30 years (typically 25 years). Our data from long-term monitoring of many PV power plants indicate that first-tier PV panels at many PV power plants, in moderate climate, start to fail after about 10-12 years. Compared to standard PV systems, the agrivoltaic systems are exposed to extraordinary influences of agriculture like dust, humidity, vibrations, fertilizersetc. Our studies compare the quality of PV panel components within last 25 years. We performed long-term monitoring of 85 PV plants, including agrivoltaics, worldwide too. PV panel failures within strings cause subsequent damage to multistring inverters. As inverters are more expensive than the PV panels, the total expenses for PV panel and PV inverter replacement are growing quickly after 10-12 years of the PV power plant operation. Hence, it is very important to study the reliability characteristics of PV panels to predict their real lifetime and to predict PV power plant service expenses.

In recent years, there has been a focus on clean power generation, and it is critical to assess the environmental impact of novel technologies used in pollution control in power generation. The study uses life cycle assessment (LCA) to assess the environmental impacts of coal-fired thermal power plants with different emission control techniques in an Indian scenario. As there are no such studies available in the Indian context, this work might provide a holistic view of the impacts of energy generation. A supercritical coal-fired plant with a capacity of 660 MW is considered in this study. The system boundary included coal extraction, transportation, power plant operation, and transmission losses of electricity with a functional unit of 1 kWh. It was observed that there was an energy penalty due to the power consumed in emission control devices, but the maximum energy penalty was due to the power used in the carbon capture system. The LCA is done from “cradle to gate”, with impact indicators at the mid-point evaluated using the RECIPE (H) 2016 LCIA method. LCA results showed that power plant operation is the most significant contributor to environmental impact. Initially, in cases 1 and 2, climate change (CC) potential was a major impact category, but CC potential was reduced with carbon capture and storage, 0.27 kg CO 2 eq. in case 3 with ESP, FGD, SCR, and carbon capture and storage (CCS) and 0.263 kg CO 2 eq. in case 4 with ESP and CCS. But there was a considerable increase in the majority of the impact categories in case 4. Freshwater consumption potential increased from 3.98 E−03 m 3 in base case 1 to 4.98 E−03 m 3 in case 3 due to the amount of water used in chemical production during CCS, as CC potential is a major concern in power generation, However, compared to case 1, the potential for climate change increased in case 2, whilst in case 4, the potential for climate change is lower but has resulted in an increase in the majority of impact categories. Case 3 shows an optimal approach to reducing CO 2 emissions compared to other cases. The combination of ESP, FGD, SCR, and CCS is favourable for cleaner energy generation.

This study presents a technoeconomic analysis of a hybrid wind‐PV (photovoltaic) power plant (HPP) compared to onshore wind power plants (WPPs) and photovoltaic power plants (PVPPs) in the Nordic electricity market, focusing on locations in Finland and Sweden. Wind power capacity has recently increased significantly in the Nordics, increasing the profit cannibalization of wind power. Renewable energy subsidies have been phased out in Finland and Sweden, thus new wind and PV power value creation is formed from the power market. The PV power capacity has also encountered significant growth in the Nordics. However, the capacity is still relatively low, allowing more revenue for produced PV power compared to wind power. The lower PV power profit cannibalization has increased interest in HPPs instead of WPPs. This contribution studies the economic feasibility of wind and PV power in changing market conditions in the Nordic electricity market. The market operation is modeled with three different configurations including selling all the power into the day ahead spot market and baseload or pay‐as‐produced power purchase agreement (PPA). In addition, a battery energy storage system (BESS) investment is analyzed using the operating strategy of shifting production to more profitable spot price hours. This study shows that due to the profit cannibalization and high cost of capital, the power plants are currently not profitable in the Nordic electricity market except when the bidding area has high average spot prices. The worst profitability was with WPPs when exposed to the market shape risk and with PVPPs when pay‐as‐produced PPA was agreed upon due to the higher levelized cost of electricity. However, the PV power profit cannibalization is expected to increase in the future as more PVPPs operate in the Nordic power market. Thus, the PVPP shape risk may increase in the future as well.

Integrating accurate air quality modeling with decision making is hampered by complex atmospheric physics and chemistry and its coupling with atmospheric transport. Existing approaches to model the physics and chemistry accurately lead to significant computational burdens in computing the response of atmospheric concentrations to changes in emissions profiles. By integrating a reduced form of a fully coupled atmospheric model within a unit commitment optimization model, we allow, for the first time to our knowledge, a fully dynamical approach toward electricity planning that accurately and rapidly minimizes both cost and health impacts. The reduced-form model captures the response of spatially resolved air pollutant concentrations to changes in electricity-generating plant emissions on an hourly basis with accuracy comparable to a comprehensive air quality model. The integrated model allows for the inclusion of human health impacts into cost-based decisions for power plant operation. We use the new capability in a case study of the state of Georgia over the years of 2004–2011, and show that a shift in utilization among existing power plants during selected hourly periods could have provided a health cost savings of $175.9 million dollars for an additional electricity generation cost of $83.6 million in 2007 US dollars (USD2007). The case study illustrates how air pollutant health impacts can be cost-effectively minimized by intelligently modulating power plant operations over multihour periods, without implementing additional emissions control technologies.

The Tahuna 1 System which is located on Sangihe Island, North Sulawesi, Indonesia consists of 4 power plants, namely the Tahuna Diesel Power Plant, Tamako Diesel Power Plant, Sangihe Solar Power Plant, and Ulung Peliang Micro Hydro Power Plant are synchronized through the 20 kV medium voltage network with a total net power capacity of 15,358 kW. The cumulative value of the Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) of the Tahuna 1 System in 2023 reached Rp4,210.86/kWh, because there is no normal operation scheduling for the generating units per hour as a reference in operating the system. Until now, the dispatcher of the Tahuna Command Center must coordinate with the power plant operator to operate the generating units without any priority order of operation, but only the availability and readiness of each unit. In this research, a scheme for hourly generating unit operation scheduling was designed on the Tahuna 1 System to minimize the LCOE by considering the system load profile, generating unit capacity, and spinning reserve with a modification of the Merit Order and Priority Listing method to increase the selectivity of determining the priority list of generating unit operations based on the cheapest LCOE ranking (Rp/kWh) according to the range of generating zones created from the intersection of the cost function equation between all diesel generating units. The design of the hourly operation scheduling scheme of generating units was carried out on 12 units of Tahuna Diesel Power Plant, and 6 units of Tamako Diesel Power Plant as independent variables. Based on the results of the operation scheduling scheme with consideration of two spinning reserve units, there is a decrease in the LCOE value of the Tahuna 1 System from the initial Rp4,210.86/kWh to Rp2,913.66/kWh or 30.81% more economical compared to the current conditions. This scheduling scheme is also a better choice to implement when viewed from the operational reliability of the 20 kV distribution system.

BackgroundRiver damming inevitably reshapes water thermal conditions that are important to the general health of river ecosystems. Although a lot of studies have addressed the damming’s thermal impacts, most of them just assess the overall effects of climate variation and human activities on river thermal dynamics. Less attention has been given to quantifying the impact of climate variation, damming and flow regulation, respectively. In addition, for rivers that have already faced an erosion problem in downstream channels, an adjustment of the hydroelectric power plant operation manner is expected, which reinforces the need for understanding of flow regulation’s thermal impact. To fill this gap, an air2stream-based approach is proposed and applied at the Włocławek Reservoir in the Vistula River in Poland.ResultsIn the years of 1952–1983, downstream river water temperature rose by 0.31 ℃ after damming. Meanwhile, the construction of dam increased the average annual water temperature by 0.55 ℃, while climate change oppositely made it decreased by 0.26 ℃. In addition, for the seasonal impact of damming, autumn was the most affected season with the warming reached 1.14 ℃, and the least affected season was winter when water temperature experienced a warming of 0.1 ℃. The absolute values of seasonal average temperature changes due to flow regulation were less than 0.1 ℃ for all the seasons.ConclusionsThe impacts of climate variation, damming, and flow regulation on river water temperatures can be evaluated reasonably on the strength of the proposed methodology. Climate variation and damming led to general opposite impacts on the downstream water temperature at the Włocławek Reservoir before 1980s. It is noted that the climate variation impact showed an opposite trend compared to that after 1980s. Besides, flow regulation below dam hardly affected downstream river water temperature variation. This study extends the current knowledge about impacts of climate variation and hydromorphological conditions on river water temperature, with a study area where river water temperature is higher than air temperature throughout a year.

Offshore wind (OSW) power is critical to addressing energy security issues in nations with limited land and fuel resources. This study aims to assess the quality of OSW resources with high temporal and spatial resolution and to elucidate the economically feasible deployment of OSW using advanced power system models with Japan as a case study. First, comprehensive evaluations of OSW resources were performed by integrating a geographic information system (GIS)-based resource assessment with simulated data for hourly resource availability and renewable power plant operation. Then, using the ‘SWITCH-Japan’ model developed in our previous study, four key policy scenarios (‘pathways’) were analyzed. Each scenario incorporated three technology cost sensitivities and was assessed on multiple criteria including affordability, energy security, and land-use change. Finally, the potential for hydrogen production in other sectors was explored. We found that the Least-Cost scenario, which accelerates renewable energy growth, reduces average system costs by 43% and increases energy self-sufficiency by 31 percentage point compared to the business-as-usual scenario. While it is a highly valuable resource, OSW nonetheless necessitates significant infrastructure development and potentially faces both stricter regulations and local opposition. In recognition of this, the Limited Onshore Resources scenario reduces direct land use by half but finds only a slight increase in overall costs. While the balance of OSW potential is utilized for power systems, the remainder can materially enhance energy security for entire economies. Ultimately, OSW energy presents a strategic opportunity for nations to achieve energy self-reliance and reduce import dependence, emphasizing the need for timely infrastructure development.

At present, the national power system is gradually achieving separation of government and enterprise, and corporate restructuring; Implement the separation of network factories and bidding for online access, and gradually establish a modern enterprise system. Effectively carrying out energy conservation and consumption reduction work, reducing the cost of power generation and supply, is an inevitable requirement for the survival and development of power enterprises themselves.To effectively carry out energy-saving and consumption reduction work, as a group power generation company and power plant, it is necessary to solve the following problems: how to evaluate the actual and expected level of unit performance, how to quantitatively determine the impact of various factors on unit performance, how to improve operational level to reduce energy consumption, how to assess and evaluate the implementation of energy-saving work from a management perspective, and so on. Therefore, it is necessary to have a complete and scientific expert analysis system for optimizing power plant operation.