Capacity Credit Variations of Photovoltaic Power Generation During its Life Cycle

Abstract

At present, the evaluation results of capacity credit of photovoltaic (PV) power generation are mainly static fixed values that are independent of time. Considering the degradation of the performance of the PV module, the capacity credit should be a time-varying value rather than a static value during the life cycle of the PV power plant. In this paper, the annual performance degradation model of a PV power station is established, and the time-varying capacity credit in the life cycle of the PV plant is simulated by calculating the year-by-year capacity credit. By adding a 100MW PV system to the IEEE-RTS 79 system for a case study, the results are as follows: the PV capacity credit is 46.04% without considering module performance decay, 45.36% in the first year when degradation is considered, and only 31.96% at the end of the life cycle. The average capacity credit over the life cycle is about 38.38%. It shows that the capacity credit varies greatly during the life cycle of PV modules, and cannot be ignored in the evaluation of capacity credit.