Monday, 11 January 2016: 4:15 PM
Room 346/347 ( New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center)
Handout (887.9 kB)
We examine the potential for geographic smoothing of solar photovoltaic (PV) electricity generation using 13 months of observed power production from utility-scale plants in Gujarat, India. We use geographic correlation and Fourier transform estimates of the power spectral density (PSD) to characterize the observed variability of operating solar PV plants as a function of time scale. Most plants show a spectrum that is linear in the loglog domain at high frequencies f, ranging from f^-1.23 to f^-1.56 (slopes of -1.23 and -1.56), thus exhibiting more relative variability at high frequencies than exhibited by wind plants. PSDs for large PV plants have a steeper slope than those for small plants, hence more smoothing at short time scales. Interconnecting 20 Gujarat plants yields a f-1.66 spectrum, reducing fluctuations at frequencies corresponding to 6 hours and 1 hour by 23% and 45%, respectively. Half this smoothing can be obtained through connecting 4-5 plants; the diminishing returns of less than 1% occurs at 12-14 plants. The largest plant (322MW) showed an f^-1.76 spectrum. This suggests that in Gujarat, the potential for smoothing is limited to that obtained by one large plant. Preliminary results comparing generation data with 1-minute irradiance data suggest that the irradiance data may have different physical characteristics than the power plant data, suggesting work to estimate solar siting as a function of irradiance only may need review.
Supplementary URL: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/kelly-klima/10/440/250
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