Study of the Economic Impact of Operating Photovoltaic Systems in the Electric Utility Grid

摘要

The purpose of this study was to determine parameters that impact the value of photovoltaics to the electric utility. For this investigation, we therefore chose the high-, medium-, and low-load days in winter (January) and summer (July) with daily peak loads varying from 5838 MW to 9712 MW. These six days are studied for reference, no photovoltaics, and high, median, low, and intermittent solar cases. Results from these thirty case studies are presented in this report. We chose the load profile of a Southeastern utility and the photovoltaic output data from solar test facilities in Virginia and North Carolina. The capital cost of photovoltaics has not been considered. To incorporate short-term variations, we used 10-minute resolution data for both load and photovoltaic output. The performance analysis shows that, although the total production (fuel and variable O and M) cost savings are higher for high solar days, the increase is not proportional to the amount of photovoltaic energy output. The highest photovoltaic energy value comes when combustion turbine generation is displaced, since this generation is the most expensive. This indicates that a smaller photovoltaic plant size should have been selected originally; however, the scope of the contract did not allow investigating multiple plant sizes. 4 refs., 12 figs., 11 tabs. (ERA citation 14:026447)