Capacity Value from Wind and Solar Sources in Systems with Variable Dispatchable Capacity—An Application in the Brazilian Hydrothermal System

Abstract

The most robust methods to determine the capacity contribution from intermittent sources combine load curve, variable generation profile, and dispatchable generators’ data to calculate any new inserted variable source’s capacity value in the power system. However, these methods invariably adopt the premise that the system’s dispatchable generators’ capacity is constant. That is an unacceptable limitation when the energy mix has a large share of hydroelectric sources. Hydroelectric plants are dispatchable sources with variable maximum power output over time, varying mainly according to the reservoirs’ level. This article develops a method that makes it possible to calculate the capacity value from renewable resources when the dispatchable generation units of an electric system have variable capacity. The authors apply the method to calculate the capacity value from solar and wind sources in Brazil as an exercise. By abandoning the hypothesis of constant dispatchable capacity, the developed approach is in principle extensible for other energy-limited resources, such as batteries and concentrating solar power (CSP). This can be a strategy to incorporate energy-limited capacity sources into the planning and operation models as reliable capacity sources.