Reducing Costs for Integration of Renewable Energy Sources: A Way to Making Renewable Energy More Accessible

TLDR: In this article, the authors show that the prices for electricity from renewable energy sources tend to decrease around the world and have already become lower than 1.5 rubles/(kW h) in the most advantageous projects.

Abstract: The prices for electricity from renewable energy sources (RES) tend to decrease around the world and have already become lower than 1.5 rubles/(kW h) in the most advantageous projects. However, this indicator in Russia has essentially higher values both at present and in the forecast for 2035, which is caused by the system effect of RES integration in the power system. In fact, renewable energy and conventional energy are antipodes in Russia and are in contradiction with respect to each other. The article substantiates the possibility of harmonizing them with each other from the viewpoint of the universal organizational science called tectology and gives examples of technological solutions for implementing this: changing the operation modes of electrical loads in the compositions of consumer electrical systems and development of distributed cogeneration in accordance with the schedule of electrical rather than heat loads as a result of separating the heat-recovery and consumption processes in time by using thermal energy-storage devices. In fact, this refers to achieving better structural stability of the energy sector based on an alternative concept of its development and transition to optimizing the operation of the inseparable process chain “production–consumption of fuel and energy resources,” which also includes new, renewable sources. Apart from decreasing the costs for integrating RES into the power system and making the prices for electricity from RES in Russia commensurable with those around the world, this will also result in a more efficient power supply as a consequence of more uniform loading of thermal and nuclear power plants, the use of the nonutilized potential of decreasing the specific fuel consumption for electricity production in the cogeneration mode, and decreased losses in distribution networks.