Meteorologically-Informed Spatial Planning of European PV Deployment to
Reduce Multiday Generation Variability
Abstract
Renewable generation variability over multiple days is a key challenge
in decarbonizing the European power system. Weather regimes are one way
to quantify this variability, but so far, their applications to energy
research have focused on wind power generation in winter. However, the
projected growth of solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity implies that its
absolute variability across the continent will grow substantially. Here
we combine weather regimes based on ERA5 reanalysis data with
country-specific capacity factors to investigate multiday PV generation
variability in Europe. With current installed capacity (131 GW), total
PV production in Europe (52.3 GW) varies by 0.9 GW on average, with a
maximum change of 3.0 GW, upon transition from one weather regime to
another. Using projected PV capacity for 2050 (1.94 TW), variability
would rise to 13.9 GW and 43.8 GW. We present optimised spatial
distributions of capacity additions in three scenarios that
substantially reduce variability by up to 40%. One of them ascertains a
large local PV production, thereby minimising the need for long-range
power transmission while still reducing variability by about 30%,
highlighting that optimized siting and local generation can be
reconciled. Our results emphasize the value of leveraging climate
information in decarbonizing power systems.