Abstract
Wildfire smoke and other particulate matter can substantially inhibit solar photovoltaic (PV) generation production. While solar PV facilities may not be located in areas with a high fire risk, smoke from wildfires can travel hundreds of kilometers impacting a large number of facilities. This paper proposes a geospatial wildfire PV capacity model to quantify the anticipated temporal reduction in PV capacity due to wildfire smoke. A case study using data for two time periods from the 2020 California wildfires and real utility scale solar generation data evidences the model's high accuracy. Results argue that wildfire smoke can cause significant temporal solar generation capacity reductions over wide geographic regions. Application of the proposed model to inform power system resiliency planning is demonstrated for two use cases: generation scheduling and siting. With meteorological service providers beginning to release smoke forecasts, our geospatial wildfire PV capacity model enables balancing authorities to make use of this information to proactively schedule generation to compensate for reductions in PV capacity. The trained model also produces geospatial derate maps that can enable generation developers to consider historical capacity derates due to smoke when making siting or planning decisions.
Highlights
Extreme wildfires are becoming an increasing risk to the safe and reliable operation of electric power systems worldwide
In this paper we investigate the relationship between effective solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity and wildfire smoke using aerosol optical density (AOD) to quantify the amount of smoke present at a specific point in time
PV generation facilities may not be sited in high fire risk zones, the smoke from wildfires can travel significant distances and affect large geographic regions
Summary
Extreme wildfires are becoming an increasing risk to the safe and reliable operation of electric power systems worldwide. Further assessment of the effects of humidity and wind speed was conducted in [12] noting that humidity can reduce efficiency by inhibiting the reception of the direct component of solar radiation and whereas wind speed can improve efficiency due to decreased cell temperature The significance of these factors varies based on the climate of the region where the PV generation is installed. This study found estimated reductions in insolation ranging from 2-9% While both dust and air pollution do affect solar PV production, the impacts can be further compounded by the presence of wildfire smoke. The magnitude of the derate in the EIA study was derived from a comparison between statewide solar generation output between September and July 2020 which could be impacted by a variety of other factors such as curtailment and scheduled outages in addition to wildfire smoke. Which tests the efficacy of the model using actual data from recent California wildfires and real utility scale generating facilities; Section IV discusses the implications and benefits of this model and means to overcome some of the model limitations; Section V presents the conclusions, detailing the significant benefits of the proposed model
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