Assessment of Wind/Solar Co-located Generation in Texas

Abstract

This paper evaluates the opportunity to load co-located wind and solar generation capacity onto a constrained transmission system while engendering only minimal losses. It quantifies the economic and energy opportunities and costs associated with pursuing this strategy in two Texas locations one in west Texas and the other in south Texas. The study builds upon previous work published by the American Solar Energy Society (ASES) which illuminated the potential benefits of negative correlation of wind and solar generation in some locations by quantifying the economic and energy losses which would arise from deployment of solar generation in areas with existing wind generation and constrained transmission capacity. Clean Energy Associates (CEA) obtained and incorporated wind and solar resource data and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT)) load and price data into a model which evaluates varying levels of solar thermal, solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind capacity against an assumed transmission capacity limit at each of the two locations.