Photovoltaic Solar Energy

Utility-Scale PV Variability Workshop

October 7, 2009; 8am - 5pm, Cedar Rapids Marriott, Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Goal: To improve understanding of PV plant variability and its impact on utility planning and operations

Participants: PV developers, utilities, DOE, labs, consultants

Attendee List

1.    DOE Programs Addressing PV Integration into Utility Planning & Operations (Dan Ton - DOE) Presentation

2.    U.S. Utilities and IEA-PVPS High Penetration PV Workplan (Christy Herig - Solar Electric Power Association) Presentation

3.    Meeting Motivation and Overview (Benjamin Kroposki - NREL) Presentation

4.    PV Interconnection Standards (Abraham Ellis - Sandia) Presentation

IEEE, NERC and FERC standards for distributed systems and utility-scale

5.    PV System Models For System PV System Models For System Planning and Interconnection Studies (Abraham Ellis - Sandia) Presentation

Positive-sequence system planning (PSS/E and PSLF) and distribution planning models

6.    Utility Operations and Variable Generation (Michael Milligan - NREL) Presentation

Overview of utility operations; possible impacts of PV variability and uncertainty; mitigation alternatives

7.    Solar Power Forecasting (Mark Ahlstrom - WindLogics) Presentation

State-of-the-art, challenges and opportunities for improvement; integration into operations

8.    Wind and Solar Integration Studies (Nick Miller - General Electric) Presentation

Solar integration study purpose, methodologies and data requirements; experience with wind integration studies

9.    Development of Data Sets for PV Integration Studies (Ray George - NREL) Presentation

Development of distributed generation and centralized system data sets for integration studies

10. On Using Mesoscale Models for Solar Resource Modeling (Michael Brower - AWS Truewind) Presentation

Mesoscale solar resource modeling methodologies, challenges and opportunities for higher time and space resolution

11. Spatial and Temporal Scales of Solar Variability (Andrew Mills - LBNL) Presentation

Analysis of ARM data in the Southern Great Plains region; existing solar radiation database

12. Comparison of PV and Wind Variability (Yih-Huei Wan - NREL) Presentation

Analysis of actual system output data to characterize PV variability and effect of geographic diversity, as compared to CSP and wind.

13. Variability In A Large-Scale PV Installation (Carl Lenox - SunPower) Presentation

Observed short-term output variability within a single large PV plant

14. Quantifying PV Output Variability (Tom Hoff - Clean Power Research) Presentation

Theory of solar resource variability and impact of geographical dispersion

15. Characterization of short-term PV variability for large PV systems (Joshua Stein - Sandia) Presentation

Effect of plant size, tracking system and other factors on output characteristics of large and distributed PV systems; static, stochastic and dynamic models for short-term PV output behavior

16. The Need for PV Output Data (Travis Johnson - NV Energy) Presentation

Approach to collect high resolution, time-synchronized data; technical challenges; proposed data format and metadata; possible ways to overcome commercial issues