Government Energy Policy, Business and Technology

Integrating Variable Renewable Energy Will Require New Policies & Infrastructure, Finds IEA

Clean Technica: A new report from the International Energy Agency has highlighted the need for new policies, infrastructure, and markets to accommodate the increasing level of variable renewable energies like wind and solar feeding electricity into national grids.

iea-8The International Energy Agency (IEA), touching on a topic that is not necessarily ‘new’ but is nevertheless vital, has released a new report entitled Next Generation Wind and Solar: From Cost to Value, which tackles the root issues at play and offers possible solutions for countries wanting to move forward. The so-called ‘root issue’ is the fact that renewable energy technologies like wind and solar are inherently variable in nature — i.e., they do not generate at a constant rate, but rather in line with whether the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. According to the IEA, “Integrating the first few percentage points of variable renewables into generation poses few problems for most power systems. Beyond these levels however, power systems must be adapted and upgraded to take variable renewables into account.”

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