Economic Justification of Concentrating Solar Power in High Renewable Energy Penetrated Power Systems

Journal Article · Tue Apr 24 04:00:00 EDT 2018 · Applied Energy

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2018.03.161· OSTI ID:1435902

Hodge, Brian S ^[1]; Kroposki, Benjamin D ^[1]; Du, Ershun ^[2]; Zhang, Ning ^[2]; Kang, Chongqing ^[2]; Xia, Qing ^[2]

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1. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
2. Tsinghua University

Concentrating solar power (CSP) plants are able to provide both renewable energy and operational flexibility at the same time due to its thermal energy storage (TES). It is ideal generation to power systems lacking in flexibility to accommodate variable renewable energy (VRE) generation such as wind power and photovoltaics. However, its investment cost currently is too high to justify its benefit in terms of providing renewable energy only. In this paper we evaluate the economic benefit of CSP in high renewable energy penetrated power systems from two aspects: generating renewable energy and providing operational flexibility to help accommodating VRE. In order to keep the same renewable energy penetration level during evaluation, we compare the economic costs between the system with a high share of VRE and another in which some part of the VRE generation is replaced by CSP generation. The generation cost of a power system is analyzed through chronological operation simulation over a whole year. The benefit of CSP is quantified into two parts: (1) energy benefit - the saving investment of substituted VRE generation and (2) flexibility benefit - the reduction in operating cost due to substituting VRE with CSP. The break-even investment cost of CSP is further discussed. The methodology is tested on a modified IEEE RTS-79 system. The economic justifications of CSP are demonstrated in two practical provincial power systems with high penetration of renewable energy in northwestern China, Qinghai and Gansu, where the former province has massive inflexible thermal power plants but later one has high share of flexible hydro power. The results suggest that the CSP is more beneficial in Gansu system than in Qinghai. The levelized benefit of CSP, including both energy benefit and flexibility benefit, is about 0.177-0.191 $/kWh in Qinghai and about 0.238-0.300 $/kWh in Gansu, when replacing 5-20% VRE generation with CSP generation.

• Research Organization: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)
• DOE Contract Number: AC36-08GO28308
• OSTI ID: 1435902
• Report Number(s): NREL/JA-5D00-71442
• Journal Information: Applied Energy, Journal Name: Applied Energy Journal Issue: none Vol. 222; ISSN 0306-2619
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
break-even cost
concentrating solar power
economic justification
operational flexibility
variable renewable energy