EU-Altener IRENE-2010: Integration of renewable energy

For many obvious reasons, increasing the share of RES-E in electrical generation constitutes today an objective recognised by all European partners. The European Commission published a White Paper defining the goal to be reached at the horizon 2010 of 675 TWh electrical energy production based on renewables and entrusted in May 1999 the ALTENER Working Group IRENE-2010 with the mission to examine how this target could be reached and how such an important amount of RES-E could be integrated in the European power system. The method selected by the members of the Working Group was the following: starting from the current situation of the renewable energies and the current practices in the power utilities, they have determined what would be the most probable evolution of RES-E (distribution in Europe according to their type) and how, from a technical and organisational point of view, these energies would influence the following fields of activities: long term planning, power system performance, operation and EMS tools, and institutional framework. From this study, a list of recommendations were identified for actions to be launched by the European Commission in the future in order to ensure a sufficient transmission and interconnection capacity to accommodate a high (if not total) utilisation of the RES-E generated energy. According to their priority, these recommended actions concern the following fields: Operation Code & Tools (prognosis) for the TSO operation; Impact of policies and incentives on the development of the RES-E economy; Need for definition of coherent grid access requirements; Modelling electrical grid integration (tools/models); Detailed spatial and temporal RES inventory; utilities planning code strategies and methodologies; New connection/integration techniques/storage; Overall market understanding and simulation techniques; Technology development RE biomass; Dissemination RES-E information