Too much of a good thing? Global trends in the curtailment of solar PV

Solar photovoltaic (PV) systems generate electricity with no marginal costs or emissions. As a result, PV output is almost always prioritized over other fuel sources and delivered to the electric grid. However, PV curtailment is increasing as PV composes greater shares of grid capacity. In this pape...

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Autores principales: O'Shaughnessy, Eric, Cruce, Jesse R., Xu, Kaifeng
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7470769/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32908323
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.solener.2020.08.075
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author O'Shaughnessy, Eric
Cruce, Jesse R.
Xu, Kaifeng
author_facet O'Shaughnessy, Eric
Cruce, Jesse R.
Xu, Kaifeng
author_sort O'Shaughnessy, Eric
collection PubMed
description Solar photovoltaic (PV) systems generate electricity with no marginal costs or emissions. As a result, PV output is almost always prioritized over other fuel sources and delivered to the electric grid. However, PV curtailment is increasing as PV composes greater shares of grid capacity. In this paper, we present a novel synthesis of curtailment in four key countries: Chile, China, Germany, and the United States. We find that about 6.5 million MWh of PV output was curtailed in these countries in 2018. We find that: Policy and grid planning practices influence where, when, and how much PV is curtailed; Some PV curtailment is attributable to limited transmission capacity connecting remote solar resources to load centers; PV curtailment peaks in the spring and fall, when PV output is relatively high but electricity demand is relatively low. We discuss available measures to reduce PV curtailment as well as increasing PV curtailment in the contexts of evolving grids and energy technologies.
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spelling pubmed-74707692020-09-04 Too much of a good thing? Global trends in the curtailment of solar PV O'Shaughnessy, Eric Cruce, Jesse R. Xu, Kaifeng Sol Energy Article Solar photovoltaic (PV) systems generate electricity with no marginal costs or emissions. As a result, PV output is almost always prioritized over other fuel sources and delivered to the electric grid. However, PV curtailment is increasing as PV composes greater shares of grid capacity. In this paper, we present a novel synthesis of curtailment in four key countries: Chile, China, Germany, and the United States. We find that about 6.5 million MWh of PV output was curtailed in these countries in 2018. We find that: Policy and grid planning practices influence where, when, and how much PV is curtailed; Some PV curtailment is attributable to limited transmission capacity connecting remote solar resources to load centers; PV curtailment peaks in the spring and fall, when PV output is relatively high but electricity demand is relatively low. We discuss available measures to reduce PV curtailment as well as increasing PV curtailment in the contexts of evolving grids and energy technologies. Elsevier 2020-09-15 2020-09-03 /pmc/articles/PMC7470769/ /pubmed/32908323 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.solener.2020.08.075 Text en Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
O'Shaughnessy, Eric
Cruce, Jesse R.
Xu, Kaifeng
Too much of a good thing? Global trends in the curtailment of solar PV
title Too much of a good thing? Global trends in the curtailment of solar PV
title_full Too much of a good thing? Global trends in the curtailment of solar PV
title_fullStr Too much of a good thing? Global trends in the curtailment of solar PV
title_full_unstemmed Too much of a good thing? Global trends in the curtailment of solar PV
title_short Too much of a good thing? Global trends in the curtailment of solar PV
title_sort too much of a good thing? global trends in the curtailment of solar pv
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7470769/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32908323
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.solener.2020.08.075
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