An Initial Analysis of the Impact of Past and Future Climate Change on the Efficiency and Reliability of Solar, Wind and Hydro Energy Sources
 

Climate change will impact our electric power system, affecting both the load and generation and thereby the grid reliability. Here we investigate one part of these impacts, the effect of past and future climate change on the supply of renewable energy.  Analyzing model output data through 2100 and past data, climate change is found to impact both the total supply available and its variability. This impact is however found to vary significantly with location. Here we focus on and compare a few disparate locations, Palma de Mallorca in the Balearic Islands, Cordova Alaska, McAllen TX and Oroville CA. Using developed metrics, this analysis applies a developed process to evaluate the changing needs for energy storage as well as the ability to evaluate the impact on grid reliability from both penetration of increasing renewable resources and changes in the variability of the resource on both transmission grids and microgrids in order to guide possible mitigation paths.