Average and Marginal Capacity Credit Values of Renewable Energy and Battery Storage in the United States Power System

Technical Report · Mon Nov 18 04:00:00 EST 2024

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/2478444· OSTI ID:2478444

Pham, An T. ^[1]; Cole, Wesley ^[1]; Gagnon, Pieter ^[1]

---

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

As deployment of renewable resources and storage continue to significantly grow in the coming decades, these technologies will play increasingly important roles in maintaining power systems' resource adequacy. Few analyses so far offer comprehensive comparisons of forward-looking average and marginal capacity credits of variable renewable energy and storage in the U.S. interconnections across a wide range of possible futures. To fill this research gap, we quantify the average and marginal capacity credits of solar PV, onshore and offshore wind, and batteries between 2026 and 2050 across the U.S power systems to examine the temporal trends, spatial patterns, and trade-offs between these two capacity accreditation approaches. Across technologies, capacity credits of solar PV most clearly follow downward trends over time, reflecting the significant rise in solar PV generation share as the grid decarbonizes. While battery storages' generation shares also rise significantly over time, their capacity credits always remain stably high due to their capabilities to be dispatched strategically during critical periods to maintain reliability. On the other hand, capacity credits of wind technologies in general follow slight upward trends as their generation shares level off. There are strong spatial variabilities of both average and marginal capacity credits across technologies, but capacity credits of solar PV displaying the most obvious spatial patterns with high capacity credits concentrating in wind-rich, solar-poor regions in SPP, PJM, and MISO, suggesting potential reliability benefits of interconnection-wide planning for renewable energy deployments. Additionally, except for offshore wind, average capacity credits of all other renewable technologies tend to be higher than their marginal capacity credits, indicating that existing renewable resources tend to be accredited higher than new resources at almost any time.

• 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: 2478444
• Report Number(s): NREL/TP--7A40-89587; MainId:90366; UUID:85e65804-7c03-4b1b-a6b3-020118460c18; MainAdminId:74289
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

25 ENERGY STORAGE
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
ReEDS
Standard Scenarios 2023
average capacity credit
battery storage
capacity credit
capacity expansion model
marginal capacity credit
renewable energy