Expert workshop on how to address variable renewables in long-term energy planning (AVRIL)

System integration of high shares of renewable energy requires both long term techno-economic planning in the energy sector as well as short term network design in the power sector. In particular, long term scenario planning is key to enabling the transition to a renewables-based energy system, as experience from countries that are on the way to such a transition shows. There is a lack of established best practices on energy planning with high shares of renewables, which hinders countries’ efforts to establish credible long term energy plans to guide their policy decisions. The project AVRIL (Addressing the Variable Renewables in Long-term Planning) aims to collect methodologies and best practices for long term planning, particularly regarding how to integrate variable renewable energy (VRE) into such planning in the context of developing countries.

This workshop was the second in a series designed to prepare a catalogue of such methodologies (the link to the first workshop is here. IRENA convened 27 international energy experts from European institutions (mostly academic) as well as energy planners from selected North African countries. Active discussion was held on two themes: 1) VRE impacts on the power system that are relevant to long term planning; and 2) key pillars of a robust energy planning methodology that addresses such impacts, in order to increase the validity of future energy plans with higher VRE shares.

The finalized proceedings are available in PDF here.

Agenda

2nd March, 2015

9:30 – 9:40

9:40 – 10:20

10:20 – 10:50

11:10 – 12:00

12:00 – 13:00

14:00 – 15:00

15:00 – 17:50

17:50 – 18:00

  • Wrap up

3rd March, 2015


9:30 – 10:00
  • Feedback from North African delegates on Day 1 discussion

10:00 – 12:15

12:15 – 12:50

  • Next steps