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Assessing climate change impacts on the Iberian power system using a coupled water-power model

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Abstract

Climate change is expected to have a negative impact on the power system of the Iberian Peninsula; changes in river runoff are expected to reduce hydropower generation, while higher temperatures are expected to increase summer electricity demand, when water resources are already limited. However, these impacts have not yet been evaluated at the peninsular level. We coupled a hydrological model with a power market model to study three impacts of climate change on the current Iberian power system: changes in hydropower production caused by changes in precipitation and temperature, changes in temporal patterns of electricity demand caused by temperature changes, and changes in irrigation water use caused by temperature and precipitation changes. A stochastic dynamic programming approach was used to develop operating rules for the integrated system given hydrological uncertainty. We found that changes in precipitation will reduce runoff, decrease hydropower production (with accompanying increases in thermal generation), and increase irrigation water use, while higher temperatures will shift power demand from winter to summer months. The combined impact of these effects will generally make it more challenging to balance agricultural, power, and environmental objectives in the operation of Iberian reservoirs, though some impacts could be mitigated by better alignment between temporal patterns of irrigation and power demands.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the Portuguese Meteorological Institute (IM) for the PT02 gridded precipitation dataset used in this work; the Spanish Met Agency (AEMET) and Universidad the Cantabria for the data provided for this work (Spain02 gridded precipitation dataset). The ENSEMBLES data used in this work was funded by the EU FP6 Integrated Project ENSEMBLES (Contract number 505539) whose support is gratefully acknowledged. We acknowledge the E-OBS dataset from the EU-FP6 project ENSEMBLES (http://ensembles-eu.metoffice.com) and the data providers in the ECA&D project (http://eca.knmi.nl). We thank M.A. Sunyer for her help with downscaling of the climate change data; and J. Galvan, J.A. Álvarez-González, G. Perez-Dolset and I. Carrasco-Sánchez, from Confederación Hidrográfica del Ebro, for the data they provided.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Engineering, DTU, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark

    Silvio J. Pereira-Cardenal, Karsten Arnbjerg-Nielsen & Peter Bauer-Gottwein

  2. DHI, Hørsholm, Denmark

    Henrik Madsen, Niels Riegels & Roar Jensen

  3. SINTEF Energy Research, Trondheim, Norway

    Birger Mo

  4. NTNU, Department of Electric Power Engineering, Trondheim, Norway

    Ivar Wangensteen

Authors
  1. Silvio J. Pereira-Cardenal
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  2. Henrik Madsen
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  3. Karsten Arnbjerg-Nielsen
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  4. Niels Riegels
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  5. Roar Jensen
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  6. Birger Mo
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  7. Ivar Wangensteen
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  8. Peter Bauer-Gottwein
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Correspondence to Silvio J. Pereira-Cardenal.

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Pereira-Cardenal, S.J., Madsen, H., Arnbjerg-Nielsen, K. et al. Assessing climate change impacts on the Iberian power system using a coupled water-power model. Climatic Change 126, 351–364 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1221-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1221-1

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