Production of Green Energy Can Be Impacted by Climate Change, Study Suggests

Feb, 2021 - By SMI

As the record-breaking hot summers and events of extreme weather events are changing global climate, researchers are now looking for more renewable sources of energy.

The Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy has published a paper in which researchers have investigated whether solar and wind power generated by farms would differ in current and future climate. In this study, researchers focused on Australia as the case study is ideal for regions with extreme weather events like windstorms and bush fires. Sites in South Australia, near Adelaide and in New South Wales were selected since these are the locations that have renewable generators. The key weather variables such as surface solar irradiance, wind speed and temperature in intervals of 30 minutes for the years 1980 to 2060 were analyzed by researchers. According to Jing Huang, co-author and co-investigator, the trends of gain in temperature in the annual wind and solar power generation due to changes in the climate are at 0.1% of the average production per decade, which is quite minimal. The climate change in the production of these renewable energy was more severe during the five hottest days of each year. The solar power production decreased by 4.5% to 1.1%, and the wind power production decreased by 1.6% to 3% in every decade during the hottest days.

The findings of this study can serve as an indicator to the concerned authorities about interconnectivity of power networks in different environmental conditions, especially temperature. However, different regions have different reasons for changes in climatic conditions; therefore this study needs to be conducted in different climate regions to study the variability of climate. Moreover, the findings of this study cannot be generalized as reasons for climate change differ depending on the region.