| dc.description.abstract | The increasing importance of renewable energy supply in the transition to carbon neutral energy systems
highlights the need of an adequate understanding of the associated risks to energy supply. Variable
renewable energy sources are inherently dependent on meteorological conditions, and as such could
provide insufficient energy for certain periods of time. In this study, a characterization is performed on
such energy drought events in the Netherlands. ERA-5 reanalysis and MERRA-2 climate data is used to
model the performance of solar PV and wind power generation. Statistical approaches are used to
investigate these events on provincial, sub-national and national scale. It has been found that the province
least susceptible to energy drought occurrence is Zeeland, whereas Gelderland, Limburg, Noord-Brabant,
Overijssel and Utrecht are most likely to experience energy droughts. Additionally, copula theory is used
to investigate probabilities of the co-occurrence of energy drought events between regions and
technologies. When provinces are aggregated to sub-national regions, this research shows that
constructed copula models capture tail events in the distribution of power generation in the form of
energy droughts well. A co-occurrence between 9.61% and 14.9% has been found for ED events between
the two defined sub-national regions, with return periods between 67.7 and 117 days. Finally, extreme
value theory is applied to investigate extremely long-lasting energy droughts. Using the Peak-OverThreshold method, a VaR-95% value between 27.2 and 46 hours and a CVaR-95% value between 41.6 and
58.1 hours has been found for extreme energy drought duration in the Netherlands. Furthermore, 50-
year and 100-year ED durations are found to be between 84 and 99 hours and 91 and 107 hours,
respectively. The results of this study can be incorporated in the planning of future renewable energy
installations, and for grid operators to determine and manage the risk of black outs more accurately. | |
