TY - JOUR A1 - Hirth, Lion A1 - Ueckerdt, Falko A1 - Edenhofer, Ottmar T1 - Integration Costs Revisited – An economic framework for wind and solar variability JF - Renewable Energy N2 - The integration of wind and solar generators into power systems causes “integration costs” – for grids, balancing services, more flexible operation of thermal plants, and reduced utilization of the capital stock embodied in infrastructure, among other things. This paper proposes a framework to analyze and quantify these costs. We propose a definition of integration costs based on the marginal economic value of electricity, or market value – as such a definition can be more easily used in economic cost-benefit assessment than previous approaches. We suggest decomposing integration costs intro three components, according to the principal characteristics of wind and solar power: temporal variability, uncertainty, and location-constraints. Quantitative estimates of these components are extracted from a review of 100 + published studies. At high penetration rates, say a wind market share of 30–40%, integration costs are found to be 25–35 €/MWh, i.e. up to 50% of generation costs. While these estimates are system-specific and subject to significant uncertainty, integration costs are certainly too large to be ignored in high-penetration assessments (but might be ignored at low penetration). The largest single factor is reduced utilization of capital embodied in thermal plants, a cost component that has not been accounted for in most previous integration studies. KW - Wind power KW - Solar power KW - Integration cost KW - Variable renewables Y1 - 2015 UR - https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-hsog/frontdoor/index/index/docId/2287 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b1570-opus4-22878 SN - 0960-1481 VL - 74 SP - 925 EP - 939 PB - Elsevier Ltd ER -