Impact of Service Sector Loads on Renewable Power Integration

Transition to solar and wind power generation requires a deep understanding of their impact on the power system. This paper focuses on urban distribution grids, specifically on the influence of load heterogeneity, and on time and weather metric dependency. Urban demand is a mix of residential and service sector loads. However, service sector loads are largely absent in power systems research. This paper explicitly addresses their influence on supply and demand mismatches and on renewable power utilisation metrics. Detailed service sector load profiles are obtained through extensive data combination. Second, this paper introduces a novel time interval classification system to study time and weather dependency of metrics. A proof-of-concept is given for the Netherlands. Results of three experiments are reported. First, smaller mismatches and higher renewable power utilisation is found for mixed residential and service sector loads as compared to residential loads only. Results are statistically significant over a broad range of renewable energy penetration scenarios. Second, time interval classification system application allows to identify metric trends and critical metric values as a function of both time and weather. Third, load flexibility and storage improve renewable power integration metrics, yet in urban areas these improvements necessitate dedicated service sector programs.