The Economics of Running CSP as a Capacity Resource in the 100% Renewable Future
Sites studied for potential CSP capacity plants IMAGE@ Using Concentrating-Solar-Power Plants as Economic Carbon-Free Capacity Resources
A new paper to be published in the journal Energy Conversion and Management: X: Using Concentrating-Solar-Power Plants as Economic Carbon-Free Capacity Resources – develops an approach to assessing the capacity contribution from CSP plants with thermal energy storage in a future Southwestern US grid once there is a very high level of other renewables like PV and wind energy.
“A lot of other work looks at capacity contributions of CSP under current load patterns where capacity contributions are very good because you still have very good coincidence between solar production and load,” said corresponding author Ramteen Sioshansi.
“So we wanted to see how that changes in the future when load patterns are different; when there’s a shift from peak load being hot summer afternoons to evenings – to winter mornings, winter evenings becoming more critical: Is there a real performance deterioration? What we find is as long as you have a sufficiently large storage capability these plants can still do fairly well with with these different load patterns.”
