Energy Evolution: Forecasting the Development of Non-Conventional Renewable Energy Sources and Their Impact on the Conventional Electricity System

Abstract

The development of the world’s electric power systems goes back over a century. During this period, the overwhelming majority of states have formed stable, typically centralized systems for generation, transmission, and distribution of electrical energy. At the same time, technologies, primarily for energy generation, are steadily developing, which leads to the emergence of potentially effective technological solutions based on fundamentally new energy sources. The most rapidly expanding group at the moment are renewable energy sources (RES). This fact is due to the significant coverage of the potential environmental and economic benefits of using technologies based on RES in the information environment. At the same time, the process of transformation of traditional electric power systems, by integrating generation technologies based on the use of renewable energy sources, is extremely resource-intensive, and also potentially reducing the level of sustainability and efficiency of the entire system functioning as a whole. This thesis is primarily true for exclusively centralized power systems. The purpose of this study is to create a forecasting model for the development of non-conventional renewable energy sources (NCRES) for short, medium, and long term, which makes it possible to form an action plan to ensure a reliable and uninterrupted supplying of consumers, taking into account the existing electric power system. The developed model made it possible to identify the most promising directions of NCRES from the integration point of view, and for them the quantification and clustering of the information environment was carried out, which made it possible to identify key trends and the specifics of the development of technological solutions for these directions of renewable energy sources. The developed tool and systemic conclusions formulated on the basis of its application make it possible to develop mathematically sound solutions in the direction of managing the development of traditional electric power systems based on the integration of NCRES.