资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

Generating electricity using renewable energy resources (such as solar, wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric energy) rather than fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) reduces greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector and helps address climate change. While renewables are preferable to fossil fuel generators from an emissions standpoint, power output from renewable sources depends on variable natural resources, which makes these plants more difficult to control and presents challenges for grid operators.

To properly balance electricity supply and demand on the power grid, grid operators must have a sense of how much renewable energy is being generated at any given moment, how much renewable energy generation is expected, and how to respond to changing generation. All of this information can be difficult for grid operators to know due to the intermittent nature of renewable power and the wide variety in the size and locations of renewable energy resources across the power grid. As the proportion of renewable energy capacity on the grid grows, these issues are becoming increasingly important to understand. This explainer explores how renewables connect to the grid, how these connections impact grid operations, and implications of a high penetration of renewables for the grid in the future.

This explainer frequently references the workings of the electric grid. To learn about how the grid functions and find definitions of some common terms, read “Electricity 101.”