Grid integration of renewable energy in Qatar: Potentials and limitations

Highlights: • Potential of renewables energy into Qatar's electricity supply grid. • A one-year analysis based on an hourly time step is conducted on the EnergyPLAN tool. • Qatar's electricity, water, and cooling demands for 2019 are used as input in this study. • The CSP with storage can increase the share of electricity supply by RES to 38.2%. • Pump hydro and electro-fuels storage are the best alternatives to enhance the storage capacities of RES. This study presents an analysis of the current electricity supply grid in Qatar and investigates the potential of integrating various renewable energy sources (RES) into the grid. The hourly demand profile for electricity, cooling, and freshwater is used to investigate the impact of wind turbines, photovoltaics, and concentrated solar power integration on the environmental emissions and total annual cost of the systems. A one-year dynamic analysis based on an hourly time step is conducted using the EnergyPLAN tool. The results show that large-scale installations of renewable energy technologies can decrease the emission rate from electricity production at a relatively lower cost. A reference case scenario representing the current state of affairs along with six other cases representing various single and hybrid renewable energy combinations for integration into the electricity supply is presented in terms of their ability to avoid excess electricity production. The eighth case scenario presents a hypothetical electricity demand for the year 2025. The results show that increasing the share of RES in electricity production is possible by as much as 80%. The optimum cases for the deployment of wind, photovoltaic (PV), and concentrated solar power (CSP) with storage technologies presented a 28.3%, 23.4%, and 38.2% share to electricity produced, respectively. The market economic simulation shows that the total annual cost for some of the scenarios that integrated renewable energy was lower than that of the reference case currently deployed in the country.