Resources and Economic Assessment of Centralized and Decentralized Solar-Electric Systems. Final Report

摘要

The purpose of this report is to compare the WELMM (Water, Energy, Land, Materials, and Manpower) requirements and the production costs of centralized and decentralized electricity-generation systems using solar-photovoltaic devices. The objective is to examine the generic differences between centralized and decentralized electric-power systems by reducing as much as possible the confounding effects of scale economies and technology mixes. The results should aid in the understanding of the physical and economic limits of alternative power system developments. The comparison was undertaken in the framework of a case study of the Languedoc Region in southern France. Four centralized and four decentralized scenarios were compared, and their different system configurations were evaluated. Evaluation of the individual load curves of nine types of consumers was followed by estimation of an aggregate load curve. An electricity-generation model then calculated the required generation capacity and associated storage requirements. The physical resource (WELMM) requirements and production costs of each scenario were calculated using data stored in a technological facilities data system (Facility Data Base). The analysis shows that the centralized systems are cheaper to operate and less resource-intensive than the decentralized scenarios, mainly due to the possibility of using efficient hydrogen-storage systems in the centralized scenarios. (ERA citation 08:029337)