Photovoltaic Variability and Geography Diversity: How Does Spatial Separation Impact Performance and Capacity

Utility-scale photovoltaic plants have are just starting to begin commercial operation, with hundreds of megawatts of new centralized projects to follow in the coming years.

With this growth comes the need to understand PV’s variable generation impact on the electric grid and better ways to predict and manage these performance characteristics. Lawrence Berkeley Labs has recently published a paper “Implications of Wide-Area Geographic Diversity for Short-Term Variability of Solar Power,” analyzing the impacts of spatial differences on short-term performance and Windlogics has recently worked with the National Renewable Energy Labs on analyzing data from Florida Power & Light?s 25 MW DeSoto plant and will present results from a paper on “Observed Impacts of Transient Clouds on Utility-Scale PV Fields.”