Benefits of Colocating Concentrating Solar Power and Wind

Journal Article · Mon Sep 16 00:00:00 EDT 2013 · IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/TSTE.2013.2253619· OSTI ID:1355780

Sioshansi, Ramteen ^[1]; Denholm, Paul ^[2]

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1. The Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH (United States). Integrated Systems Engineering Dept.; The Ohio State University
2. National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States). Strategic Energy Analysis Center

Here, we analyze the potential benefits of colocating wind and concentrating solar power (CSP) plants in the southwestern U.S. Using a location in western Texas as a case study, we demonstrate that such a deployment strategy can improve the capacity factor of the combined plant and the associated transmission investment. This is because of two synergies between wind and CSP: 1) the negative correlation between real-time wind and solar resource availability and 2) the use of low-cost high-efficiency thermal energy storage in CSP. The economic tradeoff between transmission and system performance is highly sensitive to CSP and transmission costs. Finally, we demonstrate that a number of deployment configurations, which include up to 67% CSP, yield a positive net return on investment.

• Research Organization: National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)
• Grant/Contract Number: AC36-08GO28308
• OSTI ID: 1355780
• Alternate ID(s): OSTI ID: 1260120
• Journal Information: IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy, Journal Name: IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy Journal Issue: 4 Vol. 4; ISSN 1949-3029
• Publisher: IEEE
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
Concentrating solar power (CSP)
Energy storage
Hybrid power systems
Solar energy
Wind power generation
thermal energy storage
transmission
wind