Co-Locating Wind & Concentrated Solar Power Can Improve Total Capacity Factor

Somehow, I missed a study by NREL and Ohio State University back in March titled Transmission Benefits of Co-Locating Concentrating Solar Power and Wind. Thanks to New Energy News for posting on it this week.

The study finds that co-locating wind and concentrating solar power (CSP) “can improve the capacity factor of the combined plant and the associated transmission investment.” Logical, but you know that we always need studies to prove this kind of thing.

Here’s more from the study:

“This is because of two synergies between wind and CSP. One is that real-time wind and solar resource availability tend to be slightly negatively correlated. The other is that low-cost and highly efficient thermal energy storage (TES) can be incorporated into CSP. TES allows solar generation to be shifted and used to fill-in excess transmission capacity not being used by wind. Adding TES in a transmission constrained system can reduce, but not eliminate curtailment, especially during periods of extended high wind output and high solar output.”

To read the full study, click on the link at the top of this post.

Zachary Shahan (2298 Posts)

I'm the director of CleanTechnica, the most popular clean energy website in the world, and Planetsave, a leading green and science news site. I've been covering green news of various sorts since 2008, and I've been especially focused on solar energy, electric vehicles, bicycling, and wind energy for the past few years. You can also find my work on Scientific American, Reuters, Think Progress, GE's ecomagination site, several sites in the Important Media network, & many other places. To connect on some of your favorite social networks, go to zacharyshahan.com or click on some of the links below.

jburt56

As the grid builds out the balancing act gets easier. Eurasia has some interesting possibilities as it spans so many time zones.
Matt

Would have seen the “same” effect if you placed a large battery on the wind farm. Of course transmittion utilization 24/7 might not be what you want to maximize. In fact having the storage close to where it is used to load level as needed it likely a better solution. When cost come down there will be storage of wind on the farm, for when too much wind means I can’t send it down the line yet (line cap limit) and storage closer to use for load balance.
- RobS
  
  That is true Matt but the smoother you can make the output the smaller the storage system needs to be to shave the peaks and fill the valleys in output, turning intermittent into highly valuable base load. Battery and other grid storage techniques are in their infancy and are still very expensive. Using techniques such as co-located sources and geographical distribution to reduce the degree of intermittency means the storage capacity and therefore cost is minimised. Ive always felt one of the big mitigating factors of renewable intermittency is the variety of technologies and the way they complement each other. How likely is it that the wind stops blowing, the sun stops shining, the tides stop flowing, the waves stop breaking, the crops stop growing the rivers stop flowing and the earths heat expires all at the same time in every location? Using the benefits of a diverse catalogue of renewables smoothed with a small amount of storage is the end game in my opinion.
  - RobS
    
    If you want to see what geographical distribution is capable of even within one technology group check out the Australian wind power output for yesterday, 25/5/12, here http://windfarmperformance.info/ if checking this later than 26/5/12 make sure to set the date in the top right corener to 25/5/12
    - Bill_Woods
      
      Some days that works, and some days it doesn’t.
      E.g. see http://windfarmperformance.info/?date=2012-05-20
      Or the UK’s wind power from 20 to 24 May 2012
      http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/~dcurtis/NETA.html
      - RobS
        
        I’m not suggesting geographical distribution solves the whole issue its just one of the stronger mitigators of intermittent output. Which is exactly why additional mitigating factors like co-located complementary technologies are being discussed. Having sailed extensively using only wind and solar for well over 95% of my power needs I can tell you first hand that wind and solar are a highly complementary pairing, they naturally play off each other in that there tends to be more wind at times with less sun and vice versa so the size of the battery storage needed and the need to run a generator were both significantly reduced by combining these two technologies.
  - http://cleantechnica.com/ Zachary Shahan
    
    ” How likely is it that the wind stops blowing, the sun stops shining, the tides stop flowing, the waves stop breaking, the crops stop growing the rivers stop flowing and the earths heat expires all at the same time in every location? ”
    
    And if that happens, i think we’re screwed no matter what.