Jerry Bell Resource Adequacy Planning Department Planning Committee December 14th, 2017
How did this concept arise? Wind units rarely use their full inverter capability If wind units capacity factors in summer are in the 15%-25% range, could adding solar panels increase the utilization of the inverters and increase the capacity factor for a hybrid Wind Solar system? 2
Review of PJM wind and solar capacity factor calculations The PJM summer wind/solar capacity factors are based on the four hours ending 1500-1800 every day from June 1 through August 31 (368 hours annually) Typically, for each wind resource, the three most recent years capacity factors are averaged to arrive at the three year capacity factor 3
Production Characteristics Could we combine the production characteristics of both a wind and solar resource to simulate a hybrid Wind Solar resource? First, let s look at typical wind unit production profiles for the last three years on the following charts These annual charts contain about 27,000 unit hours of data each More than 75 wind units with 368 hours of data each 4
Summer 2015 Production Profile 5
Summer 2016 Production Profile 6
Summer 2017 Production Profile 7
Summer Production Profiles 2015-2017 8
Composite Summer Wind Production Profile 2015-2017 Average 15.8 16.7% MW 9
Composite Production Profile Of the 368 peak summer hours, 20% of a wind units inverter capability is available for 360.2 hours In other words, 20% of a wind units inverter capability is unutilized for 97.9% of the summer peak hours Could the addition of 20% of the wind units capability be added by solar, cost effectively (no inverters), in order to increase the capacity factor of a hybrid Wind Solar unit? Assume the wind units capability is 2.5 MW Assume the solar capability is 0.5 MW (20% of the wind capability) Let s take a look at the typical production profile of a solar unit 10
Typical Fixed Panel Solar Profile 11
Composite Summer Wind Production Profile 2015-2017 12
Wind and Solar Profiles 13
Wind and Solar Profiles with Resultant Hybrid Profile 14
The red line on the previous slide represents the hybrid wind/solar generator production Again, the wind unit capability is 2.5 MW; the solar portion is capable of 0.5 MW For 360.2 hours the wind production will be augmented by all of the solar production For 7.8 hours the wind production will be augmented by a portion of the solar production For those 7.8 hours, production will be limited to 2.5 MW For this example the wind capability is 2.5 MW and the solar capability is 0.5 MW The capacity factor limit for 2.5 MW hybrid facility is 25.5% It is essentially the capacity weighted average of the wind and solar profiles In other words, to set initial CIRs for a hybrid wind/solar project we should use the capacity weighted average of the solar and wind class average capacity factors Adding the actual wind and solar profiles yields a capacity factor of 25.4% If there were no hours of wind production at or above 80% capacity factor in this example, the actual capacity factor would have been 25.5% 15
Conclusions For a single wind turbine with a capacity of 2.5 MW which may normally have a 16.7% capacity factor, 0.5 MW of solar panels could be added to the generator using the unused inverter capability to increase the capacity factor from 16.7% to 25.4%, based on actual data Similarly, for a wind unit with a capacity of 2.5 MW which may normally have a 16.7% capacity factor, 1.0 MW of solar panels could be added to the generator using the unused inverter capability to increase the capacity factor from 16.7% to 33.7%, based on actual data There are about 23 hours (6.3% of the peak hours) where the wind capacity factors are greater than 60% Depending upon a wind units location, the initial wind production profile and its actual capacity factor may be better or worse than depicted Keep in mind that the performance increase is only for the summer period; solar panels will most likely not augment the output during winter peak hours 16
Other things to keep in mind (aka disclaimers) This example is only for two non-dispatchable resources combined into a hybrid In other words, it is only for a combination of wind and solar equipment into a hybrid resource This example cannot be used for a hybrid unit created from both intermittent and dispatchable or capacity storage resources. In other words, it is not for a combination of intermittent resources and any other unit types such as batteries or any other type of dispatchable resource This example is only rendered to explain how CIRs will be set for a hybrid Wind Solar resource This wind solar hybrid may be more attractive to sell in the RPM CP market than wind and solar alone. The CIRs set the upper limit of the MW offered into the RPM auctions There is no must offer requirement in the RPM CP auctions for intermittent resources 17
Contact info Jerry Bell Jerry.Bell@pjm.com 610.666.4526 18