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Cost-effective approaches to maintaining resource adequacy in wind and solar electricity systems over decades of weather variability
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Cost-effective approaches to maintaining resource adequacy in wind and solar electricity systems over decades of weather variability

Natasha D. Reich, Tyler Ruggles, Edgar Virgüez, Jacqueline A. Dowling, Ken Caldeira and Nathan S. S Lewis
Environmental Research: Energy
08/04/2026
DOI: 10.1088/2753-3751/ae947d
url
https://doi.org/10.1088/2753-3751/ae947dView
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

Maintaining resource adequacy—ensuring supply can reliably meet demand—of electricity systems is increasingly challenging as the share wind and solar generation increases. Planning models typically optimize for generation and storage capacities in least-cost systems using a limited number of historical weather years. However, long-term reliability depends on how these systems perform under decades of real-world weather-derived resource variability. Using a stylized single-node macro-scale energy model of CONUS, we evaluated the additional generation and/or storage capacity required to ensure long-term resource adequacy for electric power systems initially planned using weather data over a limited period but then operated over decades of weather variability. Coordinated, strategic expenditures on additional storage and generation assets were more effective at improving resource adequacy than expenditures on a single asset category, either additional generation or storage assets. For spending limited to a single asset category, expenditures allocated solely to additional wind generation could achieve resource adequacy standards for the operational period of the system, regardless of the storage technologies available. In contrast, expenditures allocated solely to additional solar photovoltaic generation capacity, in many cases, could not achieve the required resource adequacy in the absence of sufficient storage capacity at night. Our work suggests that, to provide for long-term system reliability in wind-and-solar-reliant electricity systems optimized over a small number of years, both wind generation and storage capacities would need to be expanded beyond the levels determined in the relatively short-term optimization. These findings suggest that current resource adequacy standards, such as the NERC one-hour-in-a-decade standard, should be reevaluated considering extreme events, akin to a "once-in-a-century flood" or "wind drought", to ensure resilience against both historical weather variability and future climate-related weather uncertainties, ultimately highlighting the value of developing improved methods for extrapolating the needs of systems that will operate over decades from short-term optimization frameworks.

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