Curtailment (electricity)

In electric grid power generators, curtailment is the deliberate reduction in output below what could have been produced in order to balance energy supply and demand or due to transmission constraints.[1][2][3] The definition is not strict, and several types of curtailment exist. "Economic dispatch" (low market price) is the most common.[4]

Curtailment is a loss of potentially useful energy, and may impact power purchase agreements.[5][6] However, utilizing all available energy may require costly methods such as building new power lines or storage, becoming more expensive than letting surplus power go unused.[7][8][9][10]

## Contents

* 1 Examples
* 2 Mitigation options
* 3 References
* 4 External links

## Examples

After ERCOT built a new transmission line from the Competitive Renewable Energy Zone in West Texas to the central cities in the Texas Interconnection in 2013, curtailment was reduced from 8-16% to near zero.[11]

Curtailment of wind power in western China was around 20% in 2018.[12]

In 2018, curtailment in the California grid was 460 GWh, or 0.2% of generation.[13] Curtailment has since increased[7][14] to 150-300 GWh/month in spring of 2020 and 2021,[15][16] mainly solar power at noon as part of the duck curve.[17]

In Hawaii, curtailment reached 20% on the island of Maui in Hawaii in the second and third quarters of 2020.[18]

* Curtailment in Texas

* Monthly curtailment in California

* Solar power and curtailment in California, by hour

## Mitigation options

* Transmission upgrade[11]
* Demand response[7][19][17][20]
* Battery storage power station
* Energy forecasting, including forecasting for price, wind and solar

## References

1. ↑ Freehill-Maye, Lynn (8 October 2020). "California has a renewables curtailment problem. Can your Google and Facebook activity help?". Archived from the original on 12 October 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20201012144128/https://www.utilitydive.com/news/california-has-a-renewables-curtailment-problem-can-your-google-and-facebo/585932/.
2. ↑ "Wind and Solar Energy Curtailment: Experience and Practices in the United States". NREL. March 2014. Archived from the original on 1 September 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20200901201605/https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy14osti/60983.pdf. "Curtailment is a reduction in the output of a generator from what it could otherwise produce given available resources, typically on an involuntary basis"
3. ↑ "Wind and Solar Energy Curtailment Practices (brief)". NREL. 17 October 2014. Archived from the original on 9 June 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20170609103936/https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy15osti/63054.pdf.
4. ↑ Paulos, Bentham (3 April 2017). "Too Much of a Good Thing? An Illustrated Guide to Solar Curtailment on California's Grid". Archived from the original on 26 September 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20200926081832/https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/An-Illustrated-Guide-to-Solar-Curtailment-in-California. "CAISO considers three types of curtailment: Economic dispatch, a self-scheduled cut, and exceptional dispatch. These can all happen at the local level, to reduce congestion, or at the system-wide level, to reduce oversupply."
5. ↑ "How to Manage Curtailment in a Virtual Power Purchase Agreement". 13 February 2019. Archived from the original on 7 August 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20200807214948/https://leveltenenergy.com/blog/ppa-risk-management/renewable-energy-curtailment/.
6. ↑ St. John, Jeff (26 November 2019). "Do Preventative Blackouts Put California's Renewable Generators at Risk?". Archived from the original on 10 August 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20200810000404/https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/understanding-the-risk-of-preventative-blackouts-for-californias-renewable-. "PG&E will effectively shut down projects during public safety power shutoff (PSPS) events, and then not pay the developer for the lost production"
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Specht, Mark (25 June 2019). "Renewable Energy Curtailment 101: The Problem That's Actually Not a Problem At All". Archived from the original on 1 September 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20200901201611/https://blog.ucsusa.org/mark-specht/renewable-energy-curtailment-101. "In most cases, it simply does not make economic sense to build all the infrastructure (e.g. transmission lines or energy storage) that would be required to utilize every last drop of renewable electricity"
8. ↑ Elliott, Dave (10 July 2019). "Curtailment: losing green power". Archived from the original on 7 August 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20200807214948/https://leveltenenergy.com/blog/ppa-risk-management/renewable-energy-curtailment/.
9. ↑ "Archived copy". http://www.powermarkets.org/uploads/4/7/9/3/47931529/calif_curtailment_as_published.pdf.
10. ↑ "Curtailment of low-cost renewables a cost-effective alternative to 'seasonal' energy storage". 13 February 2019. Archived from the original on 13 August 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20200813210523/https://www.cleanpower.com/2019/curtailment-of-low-cost-renewables/.
11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Wiser, Ryan H., and Mark Bolinger. "2014 Wind Technologies Market Report" page 38. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, August 2015.
12. ↑ Fairley, Peter (21 February 2019). "China's Ambitious Plan to Build the World's Biggest Supergrid" (in en). https://spectrum.ieee.org/chinas-ambitious-plan-to-build-the-worlds-biggest-supergrid.
13. ↑ Victor, David G. (21 May 2019). "Pumped Energy Storage: Vital to California's Renewable Energy Future". pp. 4, 12–15. https://www.sdcwa.org/sites/default/files/White Paper - Pumped Energy Storage V.16.pdf.
14. ↑ "California ISO - Managing Oversupply". Archived from the original on 14 October 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20201014093030/http://www.caiso.com/informed/Pages/ManagingOversupply.aspx.
15. ↑ Hornyak, Tim (1 November 2020). "An $11 trillion global hydrogen energy boom is coming. Here's what could trigger it" (in en). https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/01/how-salt-caverns-may-trigger-11-trillion-hydrogen-energy-boom-.html.
16. ↑ Aniti, Lori (24 August 2021). "California's curtailments of solar electricity generation continue to increase - Today in Energy - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)". https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=49276.
17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Pyper, Julia (9 May 2019). "Electric Ridesharing Benefits the Grid, and EVgo Has the Data to Prove It". Archived from the original on 18 October 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20201018043438/https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/electric-ridesharing-benefit-the-grid-evgo. "the cumulative annual load profile by hour of LDV fleets using its fast charging network — with rideshare vehicles currently making up the lion’s share on a gigawatt-hour basis — aligns with the cumulative solar curtailment by hour on the CAISO system"
18. ↑ "Renewable Energy" (in en). https://www.hawaiianelectric.com/about-us/key-performance-metrics/renewable-energy.
19. ↑ Chelmis, Charalampos; Saeed, Muhammad Rizwan; Frincu, Marc; Prasanna, Viktor (14 July 2015). "Curtailment Estimation Methods for Demand Response: Lessons Learned by Comparing Apples to Oranges" (in en). Proceedings of the 2015 ACM Sixth International Conference on Future Energy Systems. pp. 217–218. doi:10.1145/2768510.2775332. ISBN 9781450336093. http://www.cs.albany.edu/~cchelmis/pubs/energy15b.pdf. Retrieved 9 November 2022.
20. ↑ Zheng, Jiajia; Chien, Andrew A.; Suh, Sangwon (October 2020). "Mitigating Curtailment and Carbon Emissions through Load Migration between Data Centers". Joule 4 (10): 2208–2222. doi:10.1016/j.joule.2020.08.001. "load migration within the existing data center capacity during the curtailment hours in CAISO has the potential to reduce 113–239 KtCO 2e per year of GHG emissions and absorb up to 62% of the total curtailment with negative abatement costs in 2019".

## External links

* Increase in curtailment in California, 2014—2022
* Curtailment curves in South Australia, peaking at 69% (Christmas 2021)

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