Assessing capacity credit of a solar photovoltaic farm in an island power system

Abstract

Mauritius is targeting to significantly increase its electricity generation capacity through solar photovoltaic technologies in the future. The uncontrollable and unpredictable nature of the power output from these technologies could lead to power system reliability issues. In this context, the capacity credit of an operational 15 MW solar photovoltaic farm is evaluated using a Hierarchical Level 1 analysis based on effective load carrying capability. The loss of load expectation for the power system is found to be 0.145 hours/year while the capacity credit of the solar photovoltaic farm is 23.9%. These results indicate that the generation capacity of power system is adequate to supply consumers with minimum risk of energy shortage. Moreover, the high value of the capacity credit is due to the very low penetration rate of intermittent renewable energy in the grid. Further simulations show that the capacity credit will decrease below 10% if penetration rates reach 20%.