Global Electricity Interconnection With 100% Renewable Energy Generation

Under the United Nations 'Net-Zero 2050' target, transition towards a 100% renewable energy (RE) sourced power grid has become an ever more attractive pathway. However, the inherent fluctuations and intermittency of RE generation, particularly wind and solar, would inevitably pose great technical and economic barriers to their massive integration into the energy supply. A global interconnected electricity grid to utilize the complementarity of diverse demand patterns and RE sources provides an appealing solution. With detailed datasets, this paper is therefore to assess the economic benefits of such a global electricity grid with 100% RE generation using the state-of-the-art Ultra High Voltage Direct Current transmission technologies. The global electricity grid is split into 14 regions with 20 potential interconnection routes and regional geographical centroid is treated as equivalent node for inter-regional distance calculation. Global hourly meteorological re-analysis data of up to seven years with spatial resolution of 0:25 degrees x 0:25 degrees (approximate 28km x 28km) is used to generate regional representative generation power series. With the minimum annual system cost for meeting demand in 2050, an integrated planning and power dispatch model is presented to determine the additional regional capacities of RE sources, storage systems, and the interconnectors from 2030, and in which load curtailment is incorporated and 'N -1' security are much stricter than those traditionally applied. The paper provides a comprehensive analysis with 24 cases based on different supply portfolios which show a 20% cost saving through specific global interconnections thereby lending support to the concept of a Global Electricity Grid.