Full Title: Evaluating the Technical and Economic Performance of PV Plus Storage Power Plants
Author(s): Paul Denholm, Josh Eichman, & Robert Margolis
Publisher(s): National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Publication Date: August 1, 2017
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Description (excerpt):
There is growing interest in taking advantage of the declining costs of both PV and energy storage technologies to create combined “PV plus storage” power plants. Yet there has been limited deployment of utility-scale PV plus storage systems, and technical and economic performance metrics for utility-scale PV plus storage systems are not well defined.
To help create a common framework for future discussion and analysis, we explore the technical and economic performance of utility-scale PV plus storage systems. We have three primary goals:
- Explore the physical configuration of PV plus storage systems and examine the basic technical parameters, including the type and degree of PV/storage “coupling”
- Identify key metrics useful for evaluating the technical and economic performance of PV plus storage systems
- Examine the tradeoffs among various PV plus storage configurations and quantify the impact of configuration on system net value.
The report is structured as follows. Section 2 discusses PV plus storage configurations and defines key terminology. Section 3 discusses metrics and methods to evaluate technical and economic performance. Section 4 presents a case study evaluating the impact of configuration on the value of PV plus storage. Section 5 provides conclusions and discusses outstanding issues associated with appropriate valuation of PV plus storage systems.