Scientific article
English

Levelized cost of solar photovoltaics and wind supported by storage technologies to supply firm electricity

Published inJournal of Energy Storage, vol. 27, no. 101027
Publication date2020
Abstract

Energy storage technologies can assist intermittent solar and wind power to supply firm electricity by forming flexible hybrid systems. However, evaluating these hybrid systems has proved to be a major challenge, since their techno-economic performance depends on a large number of parameters, including the renewable energy generation profile, operational parameters of storage technologies and their associated costs. In this study, we develop a method to simulate the performance and determine the levelized cost of hybrid systems to provide firm electricity supply under various supply strategies such as peak demand and baseload at three different scales (representative sizes). The methodology is implemented for Switzerland, however, it can also be replicated for other geographies. Our results show that the optimal choice for a hybrid system depends on the scale rather than the supply mode strategy. We find that solar photovoltaics in combination with lithium-ion battery at the residential (0.39 to 0.77 EUR/kWh) and utility scale (0.17 to 0.36 EUR/kWh) as well as with pumped hydro storage at the bulk scale (0.13 to 0.18 EUR/kWh) offer the lowest levelized costs. Reducing the cost of both renewable and storage technologies as well as the storage size by allowing some level of curtailment or distortion in the firm supply profile improves the cost-competitiveness of hybrid systems.

Keywords
  • Solar PV
  • Wind
  • Hybrid system
  • Energy storage
  • Levelized cost
Research groups
Citation (ISO format)
GUPTA, Ruchi et al. Levelized cost of solar photovoltaics and wind supported by storage technologies to supply firm electricity. In: Journal of Energy Storage, 2020, vol. 27, n° 101027. doi: 10.1016/j.est.2019.101027
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Article (Published version)
accessLevelRestricted
Identifiers
Journal ISSN2352-152X
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Technical informations

Creation21/01/2020 10:18:00
First validation21/01/2020 10:18:00
Update time15/03/2023 18:48:36
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