Incorporating large photovoltaic farms in power generation system adequacy assessment

Recent advancements in photovoltaic (PV) system technologies have decreased their investment cost and enabled the construction of large PV farms for bulk power generations. The output power of PV farms is affected by both failure of composed components and solar radiation variability. These two factors cause the output power of PV farms be random and different from that of conventional units. Therefore, suitable models and methods should be developed to assess different aspects of PV farms integration into power systems, particularly from the system reliability viewpoint. In this context a reliability model has been developed for PV farms with considering both the uncertainties associated with solar radiation and components outages. The proposed model represents a PV farm by a multi-state generating unit which is suitable for the generation system assessment. Utilizing the developed reliability model, an analytical method is proposed for adequacy assessment of power generation systems including large PV farms. Real solar radiation data is used from Jask region in Iran which are utilized in the studies performed on the RBTS and the IEEE-RTS. Several different analyses are conducted to analyze the reliability impacts of PV farms integration and to estimate the capacity value of large PV farms in power generation systems. (C) 2014 Sharif University of Technology. All rights reserved.