In the context of the coming sustainable energy transition, the photovoltaic (PV) technology is expected to have the major role mainly because PV plants have as main advantage the possibility to be installed directly on site of consumption (e.g., roofs and vertical surfaces of buildings), limiting land use competition for other purposes and, when coupled with storage systems, they allow to increase self-production and selfconsumption reducing the electricity bills of consumers and increasing the environmental sustainability of the energy produced. Obviously, the only exploitation of buildings surfaces for the installation of PV plants is not enough to achieve the environmental objectives established worldwide to reduce the amount of CO2 equivalent emissions, for this reason the utility-scale PV plants will strengthen their penetration in the energy mix to boost further the photovoltaic energy production. However, since the availability of the solar resource is uncertain and difficult to be predicted, some concerns arise in terms of PV plants programmability and efforts required by the existing energy system to accept the rapidly increasing amount of photovoltaic energy. On one hand the widespread diffusion of PV installation, both residential/commercial and utility scale, requires a reinforcement as well as an expansion of the grid infrastructure at both distribution and transmission levels. On the other hand, the role played by the existing fossil fuel power plants is evolving from covering the baseload to satisfy the peak demand when renewables are not available or not enough. As a consequence, they are mainly operating at partial load conditions and the number of full-load hours is strongly reduced. In absence of a proper amount of storage capacity and an increase of electricity demand, the continuous rise of PV production means a higher risk of energy curtailment at a certain time of the year. The main objective of this research is to assess the future impacts of the PV penetration in terms of additional costs for the existing energy system and to evaluate some mitigation strategies to ensure that the benefits of exploiting this renewable source will not have been in vain by an unsustainable increase of the costs for the system and the entire community. For this purpose, two main pathways are defined in this study that the current energy systems might follow in the next few years to achieve the established environmental goals. The first route maintains the current rigid energy system configuration and the evolution of it towards a RES-based energy system is driven by the expansion of the existing grid infrastructure and the diffusion of battery energy storage systems (BESS) to make PV plants programmable. This is the most well-known and thus favorite route nowadays on which most energy and climate policies are based. The second path requires a stronger change in the energy system configuration to make it more flexible in accepting the increased amount of renewable energy. In fact, the additional flexibility needed can be found in the consumption side that could properly accommodate the PV overproduction and help in the programmability of PV plants. In this regard, demand side management (DSM) strategies shall be supported and their spread shall be encouraged with more ambitious energy and climate policies. The first pathway is counting on the historical faith on technological evolution and in the inexhaustibility of raw materials, the second instead is asking for a radical change of the system as a whole (economic, energy, political and social) and requires an active role from each member of the society. While the first is easier and quicker to be followed, the second can be reasonably seen as a medium- and long-term strategy but its foundations must be laid at this time. The methodology developed during this research follows the two pathways described above. In the context of the rigid energy system configuration of the first route, the future production costs of PV plants are estimated defining a new parameter that considers the impacts of adding new PV production in the existing energy system. These impacts are qualitatively identified from which a mathematical definition is derived. The programmability of PV plants is guaranteed by coupling them with BESS i.e., the flexibility of the energy system is on the production side and is provided by the additional capacity of BESS. In other words, this first part of the methodology goes beyond the Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) concept and proposes a new metric to incorporate the so-called integration costs of PV plants to demonstrate that if all the possible integration costs are fairly assigned to VRES, in this specific case to the utility-scale PV plants, they will still remain profitable in the future years. Therefore, this study is aimed to find an easy way to estimate these additional costs, usually called integration costs, for the PV technology and define a new parameter that extend the LCOE concept including the integration costs in the techno-economic evaluation of future PV plants. This new parameter is called system LCOE accordingly with the literature available on this topic. The integration costs are classified as grid costs that consider the investments needed to reinforce and renovate the distribution and transmission grid to be able to accept the future VRES production avoiding grid instability and, balancing costs that reflect the change in the operating condition of fossil fuel power plants from baseload to peak power plants. These costs are reasonably applied to the utility-scale PV plants to demonstrate if they still remain economically profitable in the future scenarios even when a systemic approach is adopted to calculate their production costs. The point of view of an investor is adopted in this regard, for which it is important to understand (i) if the PV plant is able to achieve the market parity, (ii) the investment profitability by calculating some typical economic parameters like the Net Present Value (NPV), the Pay-Back Time (PBT), and the Internal Rate of Return (IRR). This result is cross-checked analyzing the effects on PV plants dispatchability of adding the integration costs with a bottom-up energy system model coupled with a genetic algorithm to perform an expansion capacity optimization. Considering that one of the main criticisms toward the introduction of VRES is exactly that they cause higher integration costs, the second part of the research is aimed to find mitigation strategies to reduce these integration costs that can be reflected on either the electricity bills or the profitability of future PV plants. The energy system is here made more flexible by introducing the flexibility of the consumption side that will act as another possible strategy that favors the programmability of PV production. Thanks to the energy system modelling tool, it is possible to assess the impacts and benefits of adding this new source of flexibility to the existing energy system and which are the integration costs that are more affected and how much. Two different DSM strategies are considered in this study: (i) the flexibility interval is extended within the day, (ii) the amount of flexible demand is increased. The impacts of introducing the flexibility on the consumption side are also studied in terms of change in the utilization rate of other storage technologies with which it competes and that are already operative in the energy system, BESS and pumped hydro storage in particular. This research tries to give an innovative contribution to the topic in different ways. Firstly, the approach to the energy transition identifies two possible pathways that the current energy systems can follow which differ in social, economic and political efforts to achieve the same environmental goals. Both these two routes are studied in this research in terms of flexibility options that can be adopted to reduce the uncertainty and intermittency of PV production i.e., the production technology that will contribute more to the future energy mix. This introduces another innovative contribution of this study that gives not only a generally applicable and straightforward mathematical definition of the integration costs for a more systemic approach to the PV production costs but also assess the programmability of PV production and the impacts on its production costs adopting the flexible demand as storage strategy alternative to the more common coupling of BESS. Finally, the approach to the DSM assessment is somehow innovative (as far as the author knows) since it tries to give an economic estimation of the impacts of flexible demand to the programmability and integration of a specific power production technology that reflects on its future profitability and competitiveness. Moreover, it contributes to expand the knowledge of DSM impacts and benefits on an energy system at national and transmission scale (in terms of PV integration costs, RES penetration and CO2 emissions reduction), since most of the studies are focused on residential and industrial applications and small or isolated smart grids (according to the author knowledge). Moreover, it suggests a definition that can be used to calculate the earnings coming from the participation of DSM programs. The proposed methodology is validated on the planned Italian energy transition to the year 2030 and the expected PV sector growth. This case study has been selected firstly since the author has a better accessibility of the data and a better knowledge of the energy system structure and management. Secondly, thanks to the great PV potential and exploitability. Lastly, it gives the opportunity to deepen the role of pumped hydro storage in the energy transition as flexibility option thanks to the large installed capacity of pumped hydro in Italy. The starting point of this study and the state-of-the-art of the topics covered in this research are discussed in the first introductory chapter. The second chapter is completely dedicated to explain in detail the methodology developed, i.e. the two approaches to the programmability of PV plants, the qualitative and mathematical description of the integration costs and the system LCOE application for the rigid energy system, the assessment of flexibility at the consumption side to the programmability of PV plants and the implications for the energy system towards a more flexible configuration as well as the main functionalities of the selected energy system modeling tools that are of interest to this analysis. The Italian case-study is deeply described in the third chapter explaining how the Italian energy system is built in the energy system modeling tool chosen for this analysis and the assumptions made for the future evolution of the power production technologies, costs and emissions. The results of this analysis are shown in the fourth chapter in terms of impacts of integration costs to the profitability and competitiveness of PV plants and flexibility options that allows to reduce these economic impacts. Finally, the last chapter summarizes the key points of the proposed methodology and the main results obtained. Room is made for the discussion of the methodology limitations and further development are suggested to overcome the identified weaknesses.
Nella transizione energetica prevista, il ruolo principale spetterà alla tecnologia fotovoltaica grazie al fatto che gli impianti fotovoltaici possono essere installati direttamente sul sito di consumo (ad esempio, tetti e altre superfici verticali degli edifici), limitando l’uso di suolo e, nel caso siano accoppiati a sistemi di stoccaggio, favoriscono l’autoconsumo e l’autoproduzione riducendo la bolletta elettrica ed aumentando la sostenibilità ambientale dell’elettricità prodotta. Ovviamente sfruttare le sole superfici degli edifici per l’installazione di impianti fotovoltaici non è sufficiente a raggiungere gli obiettivi climatici stabiliti a livello internazionale per ridurre la quota di emissioni di CO2 equivalenti, pertanto, gli impianti fotovoltaici utility-scale dovranno rafforzare la loro penetrazione nell’energy mix per incrementare ulteriormente la produzione da fotovoltaico. Tuttavia, dato che la disponibilità della fonte solare è incerta e difficile da predire, emergono alcuni timori in merito alla programmabilità degli impianti fotovoltaici ed agli sforzi richiesti al sistema energetico per assorbire la quota di produzione fotovoltaica che sta aumentando rapidamente. La vasta diffusione di impianti fotovoltaici (residenziali, commerciali e utility-scale) richiede da una parte un potenziamento ed un’espansione dell’infrastruttura di rete; dall’altra, il ruolo degli impianti termoelettrici esistenti si va evolvendo dal soddisfare il carico di base al coprire il carico di picco quando le rinnovabili non sono disponibili o sufficienti. Di conseguenza, questi ultimi si ritrovano spesso a lavorare in condizioni di carico parziale e le ore di pieno carico sono fortemente ridotte. In assenza di un’adeguata capacità di stoccaggio e un aumento della domanda elettrica, il continuo aumento della produzione fotovoltaica fa aumentare il rischio di decurtazione dell’energia prodotta in certi periodi dell’anno. L’obiettivo principale di questo studio è quello di stimare gli impatti futuri della penetrazione di fotovoltaico in termini di costi addizionali per il sistema energetico esistente e di identificare alcune strategie di mitigazione per assicurare che i benefici derivanti dall’uso di questa risorsa rinnovabile siano resi vani da un aumento insostenibile dei costi per il sistema e per l’intera comunità. A tal proposito, sono definiti in questo studio due principali percorsi che gli attuali sistemi energetici potranno seguire nei prossimi anni per raggiungere gli obiettivi climatici stabiliti. La prima via mantiene l’attuale configurazione rigida del sistema energetico e l’evoluzione verso un sistema basato sulle rinnovabili è guidata dall’espansione dell’infrastruttura di rete e dalla diffusione dei sistemi di stoccaggio a batteria per rende gli impianti fotovoltaici programmabili. Questa è la strada favorita e più conosciuta su cui si basano la maggior parte delle politiche climatiche attuali. Il secondo percorso richiede un più forte cambiamento della configurazione del sistema energetico per renderlo più flessibile nell’assorbire la crescente quota di energia rinnovabile. Infatti, la flessibilità addizionale richiesta può essere trovata sul lato consumo che può assorbire la sovraproduzione fotovoltaica ed aiutare nel rendere più programmabili gli impianti fotovoltaici. In questo contesto, le strategie di gestione della domanda devono essere supportate e la loro diffusione incoraggiata con politiche climatiche ed energetiche più ambiziose. La prima via conta sulla storica fiducia nel progresso tecnologico e nell’inesauribilità delle risorse naturali, la seconda invece richiede un cambio radicale del sistema nel suo complesso (economico, energetico, politico e sociale) ed un ruolo attivo da parte di ciascun membro della società. Mentre la prima strada è più facile e veloce da seguire, la seconda può essere vista ragionevolmente come una strategia di medio-lungo termine ma le sue basi devono essere poste in questo momento. La metodologia sviluppata in questa ricerca segue queste due vie fin qui descritte. Nel contesto del sistema energetico rigido del primo percorso, i costi di produzione futuri del fotovoltaico sono calcolati definendo un nuovo parametro che considera gli impatti dell’aggiungere nuova produzione fotovoltaica nel sistema energetico esistente. Questi impatti sono inizialmente identificati qualitativamente da cui viene poi desunta la definizione matematica. La programmabilità degli impianti fotovoltaici è garantita combinandoli con stoccaggi di batterie che significa rendere flessibile il sistema energetico sul lato produzione, fornendo capacità di stoccaggio a batterie addizionale. In altre parole, la prima parte della metodologia va oltre il concetto di Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) e propone una nuova metrica che incorpora i cosiddetti costi di integrazione degli impianti fotovoltaici per dimostrate che se questi venissero equamente assegnati alle rinnovabili non programmabili, in questo caso specifico i grandi impianti fotovoltaici, queste rimarrebbero comunque remunerative anche in futuro. Pertanto, questa analisi ha lo scopo di trovare un modo semplice di stimare questi costi addizionali per la tecnologia fotovoltaica e definire un nuovo parametro che estenda il concetto del LCOE includendo tali costi nell’analisi tecnico-economica degli impianti fotovoltaici futuri. Questo nuovo parametro è chiamato system LCOE coerentemente con la letteratura disponibile sull’argomento. I costi di integrazione sono classificati come costi di rete, che considerano gli investimenti per rinforzare e rinnovare le reti di distribuzione e trasmissione per riuscire ad assorbire la futura produzione di rinnovabili non programmabili evitando problemi di stabilità di rete; i costi di bilanciamento, che riflettono il cambio nelle condizioni operative degli impianti termoelettrici da impianti di baseload a impianti di picco. Questi costi sono ragionevolmente applicati ai grandi impianti fotovoltaici per dimostrare che rimangono economicamente redditizi negli scenari futuri anche quando viene adottato un approccio più sistemico nel calcolo dei loro costi di produzione. A tal proposito, viene adottato il punto di vista di un investitore per il quale è importante capire (i) se l’impianto fotovoltaico è in grado di raggiungere la market parity, (ii) l’economicità dell’investimento, calcolando alcuni parametri economici tipici come il valore attuale netto, il tempo di ritorno ed il tasso interno di rendimento. Questo risultato è poi incrociato analizzando gli effetti sulla dispacciabilità degli impianti fotovoltaici aggiungendo i costi di integrazione nel modello di sistema energetico ad applicando un algoritmo genetico per effettuare l’ottimizzazione. Considerando che una delle critiche principali verso l’introduzione delle rinnovabili non programmabili è appunto che causano maggiori costi di integrazione, la seconda parte dell’analisi ha lo scopo di trovare strategie di mitigazione per ridurre questi costi che si possono riflettere o nelle bollette elettriche o nell’economicità dei futuri impianti fotovoltaici. Il sistema energetico è qui reso più flessibile introducendo la flessibilità lato consumo che agirà come un’altra possibile strategia per favorire la programmabilità della produzione fotovoltaica. Grazie allo strumento di modellazione energetica, è possibile stimare gli impatti ed i benefici dell’aggiungere questa nuova risorsa di flessibilità al sistema energetico esistente e quali sono i costi di integrazione che ne sono maggiormente influenzati e di quanto. Due differenti strategie di gestione della domanda sono considerate in questo studio: (i) l’intervallo di flessibilità è esteso nell’arco della giornata, (ii) l’aumento della quota di domanda flessibile. Gli impatti della flessibilità lato consumo sono studiati anche in termini di tasso di utilizzo delle altre tecnologie di stoccaggio con cui essa compete e che sono attualmente già operative nel sistema energetico, in particolare batterie e impianti di pompaggio idroelettrico. La presente ricerca cerca di dare un contributo innovativo alla tematica in modi diversi. In primo luogo, l’approccio alla transizione energetica identifica due possibili strade che gli attuali sistemi energetici possono seguire che si differenziano per gli sforzi in ambito sociale, economico e politico per raggiungere gli stessi obiettivi climatici. Entrambe queste vie sono studiate in questa ricerca in termini di opzioni di flessibilità che possono essere adottate per ridurre l’incertezza e l’intermittenza della produzione fotovoltaica, che rappresenta la tecnologia che contribuirà maggiormente nel futuro mix energetico. Questo introduce un altro contributo innovativo di questo studio che non solo offre una definizione matematica semplice e generalmente applicabile di costi di integrazione per un approccio più sistemico ai costi di produzione fotovoltaica, ma valuta anche la programmabilità della produzione fotovoltaica e gli impatti sui suoi costi di produzione quando viene adottata la domanda flessibile come strategia di stoccaggio alternativa alle più comuni batterie. Infine, l’approccio all’analisi della gestione della domanda è in qualche modo innovativo (per quanto ne è a conoscenza l’autore) in quanto cerca di dare una stima economica degli impatti della domanda flessibile sulla programmabilità e integrazione di una specifica tecnologia, che si riflette sulla sua futura redditività e competitività. Inoltre, contribuisce ad espandere la conoscenza degli impatti e benefici della gestione della domanda su un sistema energetico su scala nazionale e di trasmissione (in termini di costi di integrazione del fotovoltaico, penetrazione di rinnovabili e riduzione delle emissioni di CO2), in quanto gran parte degli studi in questo settore si concentrano su applicazioni residenziali e industriali e su reti piccole o isolate (per quanto a conoscenza dell’autore). Infine, si suggerisce una prima definizione che può essere usata per calcolare i guadagni derivanti dalla partecipazione a programmi di gestione del carico. La metodologia proposta è convalidata sulla transizione energetica pianificata per l’Italia all’anno 2030 e la crescita prevista di fotovoltaico. Il caso studio è stato selezionato in primo luogo per un miglior accesso ai dati da parte dell’autore e una migliore conoscenza della struttura del sistema energetico e di come viene gestito. In secondo luogo, grazie al grande potenziale del fotovoltaico ed, infine, questo caso studio offre l’opportunità di approfondire il ruolo dei pompaggi idroelettrici nella transizione energetica come opzione di flessibilità grazie alla significativa quota di capacità installata in Italia. Nel primo capitolo introduttivo si discute lo stato dell’arte su questa tematica. Il secondo capitolo è completamente dedicato all’esposizione della metodologia sviluppata in questo studio, quindi i due approcci adottati per la programmabilità degli impianti fotovoltaici, la descrizione qualitativa e quantitativa dei costi di integrazione e l’applicazione del system LCOE per il sistema energetico rigido, la valutazione dell’impatto della flessibilità lato consumo sulla programmabilità degli impianti fotovoltaici e le implicazioni di una trasformazione del sistema energetico verso una configurazione più flessibile, così come le principali funzionalità dello strumento di modellazione energetica selezionato che sono di interesse per questa analisi. Il caso studio italiano è descritto nel dettaglio nel terzo capitolo spiegando come il sistema energetico italiano è implementato nello strumento di modellazione energetica selezionato per questa analisi e le ipotesi fatte per l’evoluzione futura delle tecnologie, dei costi e delle emissioni. I risultati della ricerca sono illustrati nel quarto capitolo in termini di impatti dei costi di integrazione sulla redditività e competitività degli impianti fotovoltaici e le opzioni di flessibilità che permettono di ridurre tali costi. Infine, l’ultimo capitolo riassume i punti chiave della metodologia proposta e i risultati principali ottenuti. Ampio spazio viene lasciato alla discussione dei limiti della metodologia e si suggeriscono dei possibili futuri sviluppi per superare tali punti deboli.
Beyond the LCOE approach : a new methodology for the evaluation of costs associated to the photovoltaic energy
Veronese, Elisa
2021/2022
Abstract
In the context of the coming sustainable energy transition, the photovoltaic (PV) technology is expected to have the major role mainly because PV plants have as main advantage the possibility to be installed directly on site of consumption (e.g., roofs and vertical surfaces of buildings), limiting land use competition for other purposes and, when coupled with storage systems, they allow to increase self-production and selfconsumption reducing the electricity bills of consumers and increasing the environmental sustainability of the energy produced. Obviously, the only exploitation of buildings surfaces for the installation of PV plants is not enough to achieve the environmental objectives established worldwide to reduce the amount of CO2 equivalent emissions, for this reason the utility-scale PV plants will strengthen their penetration in the energy mix to boost further the photovoltaic energy production. However, since the availability of the solar resource is uncertain and difficult to be predicted, some concerns arise in terms of PV plants programmability and efforts required by the existing energy system to accept the rapidly increasing amount of photovoltaic energy. On one hand the widespread diffusion of PV installation, both residential/commercial and utility scale, requires a reinforcement as well as an expansion of the grid infrastructure at both distribution and transmission levels. On the other hand, the role played by the existing fossil fuel power plants is evolving from covering the baseload to satisfy the peak demand when renewables are not available or not enough. As a consequence, they are mainly operating at partial load conditions and the number of full-load hours is strongly reduced. In absence of a proper amount of storage capacity and an increase of electricity demand, the continuous rise of PV production means a higher risk of energy curtailment at a certain time of the year. The main objective of this research is to assess the future impacts of the PV penetration in terms of additional costs for the existing energy system and to evaluate some mitigation strategies to ensure that the benefits of exploiting this renewable source will not have been in vain by an unsustainable increase of the costs for the system and the entire community. For this purpose, two main pathways are defined in this study that the current energy systems might follow in the next few years to achieve the established environmental goals. The first route maintains the current rigid energy system configuration and the evolution of it towards a RES-based energy system is driven by the expansion of the existing grid infrastructure and the diffusion of battery energy storage systems (BESS) to make PV plants programmable. This is the most well-known and thus favorite route nowadays on which most energy and climate policies are based. The second path requires a stronger change in the energy system configuration to make it more flexible in accepting the increased amount of renewable energy. In fact, the additional flexibility needed can be found in the consumption side that could properly accommodate the PV overproduction and help in the programmability of PV plants. In this regard, demand side management (DSM) strategies shall be supported and their spread shall be encouraged with more ambitious energy and climate policies. The first pathway is counting on the historical faith on technological evolution and in the inexhaustibility of raw materials, the second instead is asking for a radical change of the system as a whole (economic, energy, political and social) and requires an active role from each member of the society. While the first is easier and quicker to be followed, the second can be reasonably seen as a medium- and long-term strategy but its foundations must be laid at this time. The methodology developed during this research follows the two pathways described above. In the context of the rigid energy system configuration of the first route, the future production costs of PV plants are estimated defining a new parameter that considers the impacts of adding new PV production in the existing energy system. These impacts are qualitatively identified from which a mathematical definition is derived. The programmability of PV plants is guaranteed by coupling them with BESS i.e., the flexibility of the energy system is on the production side and is provided by the additional capacity of BESS. In other words, this first part of the methodology goes beyond the Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) concept and proposes a new metric to incorporate the so-called integration costs of PV plants to demonstrate that if all the possible integration costs are fairly assigned to VRES, in this specific case to the utility-scale PV plants, they will still remain profitable in the future years. Therefore, this study is aimed to find an easy way to estimate these additional costs, usually called integration costs, for the PV technology and define a new parameter that extend the LCOE concept including the integration costs in the techno-economic evaluation of future PV plants. This new parameter is called system LCOE accordingly with the literature available on this topic. The integration costs are classified as grid costs that consider the investments needed to reinforce and renovate the distribution and transmission grid to be able to accept the future VRES production avoiding grid instability and, balancing costs that reflect the change in the operating condition of fossil fuel power plants from baseload to peak power plants. These costs are reasonably applied to the utility-scale PV plants to demonstrate if they still remain economically profitable in the future scenarios even when a systemic approach is adopted to calculate their production costs. The point of view of an investor is adopted in this regard, for which it is important to understand (i) if the PV plant is able to achieve the market parity, (ii) the investment profitability by calculating some typical economic parameters like the Net Present Value (NPV), the Pay-Back Time (PBT), and the Internal Rate of Return (IRR). This result is cross-checked analyzing the effects on PV plants dispatchability of adding the integration costs with a bottom-up energy system model coupled with a genetic algorithm to perform an expansion capacity optimization. Considering that one of the main criticisms toward the introduction of VRES is exactly that they cause higher integration costs, the second part of the research is aimed to find mitigation strategies to reduce these integration costs that can be reflected on either the electricity bills or the profitability of future PV plants. The energy system is here made more flexible by introducing the flexibility of the consumption side that will act as another possible strategy that favors the programmability of PV production. Thanks to the energy system modelling tool, it is possible to assess the impacts and benefits of adding this new source of flexibility to the existing energy system and which are the integration costs that are more affected and how much. Two different DSM strategies are considered in this study: (i) the flexibility interval is extended within the day, (ii) the amount of flexible demand is increased. The impacts of introducing the flexibility on the consumption side are also studied in terms of change in the utilization rate of other storage technologies with which it competes and that are already operative in the energy system, BESS and pumped hydro storage in particular. This research tries to give an innovative contribution to the topic in different ways. Firstly, the approach to the energy transition identifies two possible pathways that the current energy systems can follow which differ in social, economic and political efforts to achieve the same environmental goals. Both these two routes are studied in this research in terms of flexibility options that can be adopted to reduce the uncertainty and intermittency of PV production i.e., the production technology that will contribute more to the future energy mix. This introduces another innovative contribution of this study that gives not only a generally applicable and straightforward mathematical definition of the integration costs for a more systemic approach to the PV production costs but also assess the programmability of PV production and the impacts on its production costs adopting the flexible demand as storage strategy alternative to the more common coupling of BESS. Finally, the approach to the DSM assessment is somehow innovative (as far as the author knows) since it tries to give an economic estimation of the impacts of flexible demand to the programmability and integration of a specific power production technology that reflects on its future profitability and competitiveness. Moreover, it contributes to expand the knowledge of DSM impacts and benefits on an energy system at national and transmission scale (in terms of PV integration costs, RES penetration and CO2 emissions reduction), since most of the studies are focused on residential and industrial applications and small or isolated smart grids (according to the author knowledge). Moreover, it suggests a definition that can be used to calculate the earnings coming from the participation of DSM programs. The proposed methodology is validated on the planned Italian energy transition to the year 2030 and the expected PV sector growth. This case study has been selected firstly since the author has a better accessibility of the data and a better knowledge of the energy system structure and management. Secondly, thanks to the great PV potential and exploitability. Lastly, it gives the opportunity to deepen the role of pumped hydro storage in the energy transition as flexibility option thanks to the large installed capacity of pumped hydro in Italy. The starting point of this study and the state-of-the-art of the topics covered in this research are discussed in the first introductory chapter. The second chapter is completely dedicated to explain in detail the methodology developed, i.e. the two approaches to the programmability of PV plants, the qualitative and mathematical description of the integration costs and the system LCOE application for the rigid energy system, the assessment of flexibility at the consumption side to the programmability of PV plants and the implications for the energy system towards a more flexible configuration as well as the main functionalities of the selected energy system modeling tools that are of interest to this analysis. The Italian case-study is deeply described in the third chapter explaining how the Italian energy system is built in the energy system modeling tool chosen for this analysis and the assumptions made for the future evolution of the power production technologies, costs and emissions. The results of this analysis are shown in the fourth chapter in terms of impacts of integration costs to the profitability and competitiveness of PV plants and flexibility options that allows to reduce these economic impacts. Finally, the last chapter summarizes the key points of the proposed methodology and the main results obtained. Room is made for the discussion of the methodology limitations and further development are suggested to overcome the identified weaknesses.| File | Dimensione | Formato | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
PhDthesis_PV_flexibility_EVeronese.pdf
embargo fino al 30/09/2025
Dimensione
5.6 MB
Formato
Adobe PDF
|
5.6 MB | Adobe PDF | Visualizza/Apri |
I documenti in POLITesi sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
https://hdl.handle.net/10589/191922