Download or read book Utility Scale Photovoltaic Deployment Scenarios of the Western United States Implications for Solar Energy Zones in Nevada written by and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study, we use the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL's) Regional Energy Deployment System (ReEDS) capacity expansion model to estimate utility-scale photovoltaic (UPV) deployment trends from present day through 2030. The analysis seeks to inform the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's (BLM's) planning activities related to UPV development on federal lands in Nevada as part of the Resource Management Plan (RMP) revision for the Las Vegas and Pahrump field offices. These planning activities include assessing the demand for new or expanded additional Solar Energy Zones (SEZ), per the process outlined in BLM's Western Solar Plan process.
Download or read book Estimating the Economic Impacts of Developing Solar Energy in Nevada written by Sarah S. Honeycutt and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthropogenic climate change has been, is and will continue altering the terrestrial environment. In 1997 Nevada adopted the Renewable Portfolio Standard, requiring 25 percent of its electricity to come from renewable sources. This thesis examines the economic impacts of further development of solar photovoltaic, utility-scale energy generation facilities in Nevada. It is important to understand the economic impacts of developing utility-scale projects. To estimate impacts, the models used in this thesis utilize an input-output and social accounting matrix produced by IMPLAN software, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's JEDI software. The intended contribution of this project is to use real world constraints to estimate the impacts of developing solar utilities. The constraints are based on available developable land in the Solar Energy Zones designated by the Bureau of Land Management. The estimated results are presented in terms of total impacts. Nevada's economy could experience impacts ranging anywhere from $3.2 billion to $10.8 billion from construction, and annual O&M estimated impacts range from $1.9 billion to $5.8 billion. The distributed household impacts show that solar is a high income operation, there are few job but they are high paying. Nevada has the opportunity to reduce CO2 emissions as well as expand its economy with further development of utility-scale solar.
Download or read book Managing Solar Photovoltaic Integration in the Western United States Resource Adequacy Considerations written by and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines the impact of reserve margin-based reliability assessment, as commonly used in capacity expansion models, on planning resource-adequate power systems under high penetrations of solar photovoltaics (PV). As a generation resource, PV is operationally different from the conventional dispatchable resources for which most capacity expansion models were designed. The question this study attempts to answer is whether large amounts of PV on a system (in this case, the Western Interconnection of North America) would bias the results of conventional reserve margin-based capacity expansion modeling towards an over- or under-provisioning of resource adequacy. This analysis used NREL's Resource Planning Model (RPM) for capacity expansion modeling and NREL's Probabilistic Resource Adequacy Suite (PRAS) for resource adequacy assessment. RPM uses a reserve margin requirement to enforce resource adequacy. PRAS, a collection of tools for studying the resource adequacy of power systems and the adequacy contributions of individual resources on a probabilistic basis, was used to compute multiple resource adequacy metrics across a number of simulated scenarios and system representations with differing regional detail. In all cases, including high PV penetrations (up to 33% annual generation from PV, interconnection-wide), RPM was able to produce resource-adequate systems as measured by normalized expected unserved energy and loss-of-load expectation results from PRAS. The accuracy of reserve margin approaches depends heavily on the underlying assumptions informing the capacity credit assigned to variable and energy-limited resources, particularly when such resources are abundant in the modeled system. RPM's standard methodology for estimating variable and flexible resources' capacity contributions, which is based on the top 100 hours of net load, did not appear to systematically undervalue or overvalue variable generation relative to a more rigorous equivalent firm capacity assessment using PRAS, although both over- and undervaluations were observed in specific scenarios. In the worst cases, the top 100 hour method underestimated the equivalent firm capacity of PV by two percentage points, and overestimated the equivalent firm capacity of PV by five percentage points. Calculating capacity contributions based on the top 10 hours of net load systematically underestimated equivalent firm capacities at more modest PV penetrations, but was often a better approximation of equivalent firm capacity than the existing 100-hour approach in scenarios with higher PV penetrations.
Download or read book Solar Energy Development on Federal Lands written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Natural Resources. Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book An Assessment of the Economic Regulatory and Technical Implications of Large scale Solar Power Deployment written by James Hubert Merrick and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Electricity from solar energy has many favorable attributes. Despite its current high cost relative to other technology options, a combination of cost reductions and policy support measures could lead to increasing deployment of solar power technologies. Should this pathway occur, the unique technical and economic characteristics of photovoltaics (PV) and concentrating solar power (CSP) technology will have implications for the wider electric power system. Similarly, the characteristics of the many elements that constitute electric power systems will have implications for the efficient deployment of these technologies. This thesis attempts to assess these technical and economic implications, and derive regulatory implications that result. A static cost-minimization expansion model with an 8760 hour temporal resolution, adapted from the literature, was developed in order to undertake this investigation. Following analytical development of the model formulation, the model was numerically applied to a simplified representation of the ERCOT power system. This application involved assessing changes in investment, dispatch, prices and emissions across various solar power deployment scenarios. The final portion of the thesis then addressed the complexities associated with developing the necessary transmission that may accompany large-scale solar power deployment. Findings from this work include: a) an explicit representation of the components that constitute the marginal system value of PV capacity under transmission constraints b) reasoning for why the optimal system with large scale solar power capacity includes less baseload capacity in the long term - and insights into how this may not be feasible in real systems, and c) a presentation of how solar power deployment paths diverge across capacity and energy support schemes, and across type of solar technology. In addition, it is found that: d) under perfect conditions, locational market prices will provide the adequate locational signals for `system-ecient' deployment, provided that the solar generators 'see' the signals in their objective functions, and e) the appropriateness of transmission charges for solar generators will vary by circumstance - any charge warranted should be considered in tandem with the system pricing mechanism and any renewable support scheme in place.
Download or read book Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States written by and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Managing Solar Photovoltaic Integration in the Western United States Appendix Reference and High Solar Photovoltaic Scenarios for Three Regions written by and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This slide deck is an appendix to a paper series that examines potential challenges related to planning future power systems with higher solar photovoltaic (PV) penetrations. The series uses the western U.S. power system for these investigations because it is a region the authors and their colleagues have already extensively studied. We are therefore well-suited to analyze even higher PV penetrations and then examine the results in multiple models to determine whether our current approaches are missing key details that only emerge at higher PV penetrations. This deck details the systems underlying those analyses and how they were modeled using the Resource Planning Model (RPM), a capacity expansion modeling tool. We examine both Western Interconnection-wide and regional results for three regions in the Western U.S. with significantly different existing power systems and connections to neighboring regions; this provides a more balanced picture as to how power systems with high PV penetration might emerge in different contexts and what the resulting grid challenges, if any, might be.
Download or read book Energy from the Desert written by Keiichi Komoto and published by Earthscan. This book was released on 2009 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world's deserts are sufficiently large that, in theory, covering a fraction of their landmass with PV systems could generate many times the current primary global energy supply.The Energy from the Desert two-volume set details the background and concept of Very Large Scale Photovoltaics (VLS-PC) and examines and evaluates their potential as viable power generation systems. The authors present case studies of both virtual and real projects based on selected regions (including the Mediterranean, Sahara, Chinese Gobi, Mongolian Gobi, Indian Thar, Australian Desert and the US) and their specific socio-economic dynamics, and argue that VLS-PV systems in desert areas will be readily achievable in the near future.
Download or read book Power Pooling in the Western Region written by and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Regional Mitigation Strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone written by and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 77 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This publication recommends a strategy for compensating for certain unavoidable impacts that are expected from the development of the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone (SEZ) in southern Nevada. This pilot strategy will guide future decisions for utility-scale solar development which often involves a long-term commitment of resources over a relatively large area.
Download or read book Estimating Annual Synchronized 1 min Power Output Profiles from Utility Scale PV Plants at 10 Locations in Nevada for a Solar Grid Integration Study written by and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 14 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Impact of Utility Tariff Evolution on Behind the Meter PV Adoption written by and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This analysis uses a new method to link the NREL Regional Energy Deployment System (ReEDS) capacity expansion model with the NREL distributed generation market demand model (dGen) to explore the impact that the evolution of retail electricity tariffs can have on the adoption of distributed photovoltaics (DPV). The evolution most notably takes the form of decreased mid-day electricity costs, as low-cost PV reduces the marginal cost of electricity during those hours and the changes are subsequently communicated to electricity consumers through tariffs. We find that even under the low PV prices of the new SunShot targets the financial performance of DPV under evolved tariffs still motivates behind-the-meter adoption, despite significant reduction in the costs of electricity during afternoon periods driven by deployment of cheap utility-scale PV. The amount of DPV in 2050 in these low-cost futures ranged from 206 GW to 263 GW, a 13-fold and 16-fold increase over 2016 adoption levels respectively. From a utility planner's perspective, the representation of tariff evolution has noteworthy impacts on forecasted DPV adoption in scenarios with widespread time-of-use tariffs. Scenarios that projected adoption under a portfolio of time-of-use tariffs, but did not represent the evolution of those tariffs, predicted up to 36 percent more DPV in 2050, compared to scenarios that did not represent that evolution. Lastly, we find that a reduction in DPV deployment resulting from evolved tariffs had a negligible impact on the total generation from PV - both utility-scale and distributed - in the scenarios we examined. Any reduction in DPV generation was replaced with utility-scale PV generation, to arrive at the quantity that makes up the least-cost portfolio.
Download or read book The Solar Energy Transition written by Daniel Rich and published by Westview Press. This book was released on 1983-04-12 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book On the Path to SunShot The Environmental and Public Health Benefits of Achieving High Solar Penetrations in the United States written by and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compared with fossil fuel generators, photovoltaics (PV) and concentrating solar power (CSP) produce far lower lifecycle levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and harmful pollutants including fine particular matter (PM2.5), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and nitrogen oxides (NOx). In this report, we monetize the emission reductions from achieving the U.S. Department of Energy's SunShot deployment goals: 14% of U.S. electricity demand met by solar in 2030 and 27% in 2050. We estimate that achieving these goals could reduce cumulative power-sector GHG emissions by 10% between 2015 and 2050, resulting in savings of $238-$252 billion. This is equivalent to 2.0-2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour of solar installed (cents/kWh-solar). Similarly, realizing these levels of solar deployment could reduce cumulative power-sector emissions of PM2.5 by 8%, SO2 by 9%, and NOx by 11% between 2015 and 2050. This could produce $167 billion in savings from lower future health and environmental damages, or 1.4 cents/kWh-solar--while also preventing 25,000-59,000 premature deaths. To put this in perspective, this estimated combined benefit of 3.5 cents/kWh-solar due to SunShot-level solar deployment is approximately equal to the additional levelized cost of electricity reduction needed to make unsubsidized utility-scale solar competitive with conventional generators today. In addition, the analysis shows that achieving the SunShot goals could save 4% of total power-sector water withdrawals and 9% of total power-sector water consumption over the 2015-2050 period--a particularly important consideration for arid states where substantial solar will be deployed. These results have potential implications for policy innovation and the economic competitiveness of solar and other generation technologies.
Download or read book Building Integrated Photovoltaic Designs for Commercial and Institutional Structures A Sourcebook for Architects written by and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Survey of Federal and State level Solar System Decommissioning Policies in the United States written by Taylor L. Curtis and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 45 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Overview of Opportunities for Co Location of Solar Energy Technologies and Vegetation written by and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Large-scale solar facilities have the potential to contribute significantly to national electricity production. Many solar installations are large-scale or utility-scale, with a capacity over 1 MW and connected directly to the electric grid. Large-scale solar facilities offer an opportunity to achieve economies of scale in solar deployment, yet there have been concerns about the amount of land required for solar projects and the impact of solar projects on local habitat. During the site preparation phase for utility-scale solar facilities, developers often grade land and remove all vegetation to minimize installation and operational costs, prevent plants from shading panels, and minimize potential fire or wildlife risks. However, the common site preparation practice of removing vegetation can be avoided in certain circumstances, and there have been successful examples where solar facilities have been co-located with agricultural operations or have native vegetation growing beneath the panels. In this study we outline some of the impacts that large-scale solar facilities can have on the local environment, provide examples of installations where impacts have been minimized through co-location with vegetation, characterize the types of co-location, and give an overview of the potential benefits from co-location of solar energy projects and vegetation. The varieties of co-location can be replicated or modified for site-specific use at other solar energy installations around the world. We conclude with opportunities to improve upon our understanding of ways to reduce the environmental impacts of large-scale solar installations.
