Impact of operating uncertainty on the performance of distributed, hybrid, renewable power plants

Abstract

This paper studies the performance of distributed, on-grid and off-grid, hybrid renewable power plants with short time scale operating uncertainty in solar irradiation and consumer demand. For the same, a multi-stage model using the Stochastic Dual Dynamic Programming algorithm with generation expansion is developed. The impact of operating uncertainty is quantified using this approach in two ways. First, operating and total costs for stochastically optimised hybrid plants are compared with equivalent, deterministically optimised hybrid plants. When accounted for in the generation expansion problem, operating uncertainty results in larger plant capacities in order to guarantee energy deliver..