Assessing the impact of residential buildings heating electrification on future electric loads and grid capacity requirements in California
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- We study the impacts of residential heating electrification on 2030 and 2045 California electricity loads and grid capacity requirements, as California complies with increasing Renewable Portfolio Standards and emissions reductions targets. We first develop electricity demand scenarios that account for residential heating electrification through the adoption of a mix of electric heat pump and electric resistance heating technologies. We find that residential heating electrification greatly increases electricity demand (5.9-13.0% demand increase in 2030 and 9.8-21.5% in 2045), especially during the winter. Heating electrification and electric vehicle charging needs bring changes in diurnal load shapes, resulting in bimodal demand profiles with strong morning and evening demand peaks. We also find that California’s yearly electricity loads remain summer peaking driven by cooling needs, even under aggressive heating electrification assumptions of 90% of residential heating electrified by 2045. To assess electric grid impacts, we input our electricity demand scenarios into a California-wide capacity expansion and dispatch model to solve for a least-cost energy system in 2030 and 2045. Residential buildings heating electrification results in overall higher grid capacity requirements, annual system costs, storage needs as well as an increase in imports and associated emissions from out-of-state generation. Added electricity loads from heating electrification increase California’s reliance on electricity imports, which increases modelled CO2 emissions from electricity generation. Nevertheless, heating electrification could achieve net emissions savings of more than 15 MMt CO2 per year in 2030 and 26 MMt CO2 in 2045 through the elimination of on-site natural gas consumption. Our results highlight the challenges associated with the integration of winter heating loads in California’s future solar-dominated grid and the value of flexible low-carbon generation resources such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) in integrating additional loads from residential heating electrification.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | December 2020 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Venereau, Clothilde Marie Aline |
|---|---|
| Advisor | Benson, Sally M. |
Subjects
| Subject | Energy Resources Engineering Department |
|---|---|
| Subject | School of Earth Energy & Environmental Sciences |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Venereau, Clothilde M. A. (2020). Assessing the impact of residential buildings heating electrification on future electric loads and grid capacity requirements in California. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/zb613dn3440
Collection
Master's Theses, Doerr School of Sustainability
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- venereau@stanford.edu
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