Incorporating Concentrating Solar Power into High Renewables Penetrated Power System: A Chance-Constrained Stochastic Unit Commitment Analysis

High renewables penetrated power systems would be greatly influenced by the uncertainty of variable renewable energy such as wind power and photovoltaic power. Unlike wind and photovoltaic plant, concentrating solar power with thermal energy storage has similar dispatchable characteristics as conventional thermal unit. Besides, thermal energy storage could support the coordinated operation of concentrating solar power with an electrical heater, which can be employed to convert surplus electricity in the grid into thermal power stored in thermal energy storage for further utilization. In this paper, concentrating solar power is incorporated into a chance-constrained two-stage stochastic unit commitment model. The model considers the energy and reserve services of concentrating solar power and the uncertainty of renewables. The proposed method is employed to assess the role of a concentrating solar power station with thermal energy storage and an electrical heater to provide grid flexibility in high renewables penetrated power systems. Numerical studies are performed on a modified IEEE 24-bus system to validate the viability of the proposed method for the day-ahead stochastic scheduling. The results demonstrate the economic and reliable value of concentrating solar power station to the improvement of unit commitment schedule, to the mitigation of wind uncertainty and photovoltaic uncertainty, and to the reduction of traditional unit reserve requirement. It is concluded that concentrating solar power with thermal energy storage and an electrical heater is effective in promoting the further penetration of renewables.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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