Statistical Characterization of Solar Photovoltaic Power Variability at Small Timescales: Preprint

Abstract

Integrating large amounts of variable and uncertain solar photovoltaic power into the electricity grid is a growing concern for power system operators in a number of different regions. Power system operators typically accommodate variability, whether from load, wind, or solar, by carrying reserves that can quickly change their output to match the changes in the solar resource. At timescales in the seconds-to-minutes range, this is known as regulation reserve. Previous studies have shown that increasing the geographic diversity of solar resources can reduce the short term-variability of the power output. As the price of solar has decreased, the emergence of very large PV plants (greater than 10 MW) has become more common. These plants present an interesting case because they are large enough to exhibit some spatial smoothing by themselves. This work examines the variability of solar PV output among different arrays in a large ({approx}50 MW) PV plant in the western United States, including the correlation in power output changes between different arrays, as well as the aggregated plant output, at timescales ranging from one second to five minutes