To What Extent Will Decarbonization Deepen the Conversation Between Industry and the Grid?
Decarbonization - the transition away from un-mitigated fossil fuel combustion throughout the economy - requires big changes from both power and process systems. On the power system side, those changes are expected to include large increases in variable generation, e.g., from wind and solar, which has near-zero marginal costs and at large shares can produce infrequent but consequential energy droughts. On the process systems side, industries are investigating their options for direct and indirect electrification, the latter exemplified by replacing fossil fuel inputs with zero-carbon, energy-carrying chemicals like hydrogen and ammonia produced via electrochemical processes. The economic features of these changes within the larger context of power and process systems suggest that their realization could be accompanied by a paradigm shift in how industrial facilities interact with the grid. For example, the dominant type of demand participation in power markets could change from today's focus on load reductions at peak times to a new focus on shifting electricity use, enabled in part by large-scale product storage, to take advantage of renewable energy that would otherwise be curtailed and to avoid consumption during high-price energy droughts. This talk will describe these and other possible design and operational approaches from grid and industrial economic perspectives, culminating in an enumeration of open problems that lie at the interface of today and tomorrow's power and process systems.
- Research Organization:
- National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Integrated Strategies Office; USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Strategic Analysis Team; USDOE Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC36-08GO28308
- OSTI ID:
- 2406418
- Report Number(s):
- NREL/PR-6A40-90125; MainId:91903; UUID:9270175a-b837-415f-a4c4-1f40d784b985; MainAdminId:73166
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Presented at the Sixth Future Innovation in Process System Engineering (FIPSE) Conference (FIPSE-6), 17-19 June 2024, Western Peloponnese, Greece
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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