OPINION
OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FACING THE INTEGRATION OF MORE SOLAR PV ON GRID
units might have penalties that will be paid by the system operator. Therefore, these “Hidden Costs” of integrating more
AUTHOR:
renewable Solar PV on grid must be part of the economic studies during the next phase of integrating more Solar PV on
SAMER ZAWAYDEH INDEPENDENT ENGINEER
grid. While the grid operator is facing the immediate impacts of integrating more Solar PV on grid, the policy makers will be
The Solar PV sector exponentially grew since 2009 coupled with reduction in prices and increase in efficiency in the Solar PV modules. This led to more demand by consumers to integrate large utility scale projects and net metering projects. In addition, the Solar PV off grid market thrives in places like south east Asia and Africa where many countries suffer from low percentages of grid availability to the population. Oil importing countries started developing their regulatory frameworks in order to implement Solar PV projects and reduce their dependency on imported fossil fuel and the problems associated with the fluctuation of international oil prices on the local economies. In addition, oil producing countries started taking advantage of the low cost of Solar PV projects and Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) and integrating utility scale large Solar PV project on grid in order to reduce their cost of subsidized electricity to their citizens. With more Solar PV projects on Grid, the available electricity during the Sun Peak Hours between 10am to 2pm with continue to increase beyond the demand. This will drive the grid operator to reduce the energy from the conventional electricity generating units and even shut them down during the day and restarting them during the night in order to meet the peak demand during the night. These new operational requirements will put stresses on the conventional units and require more maintenance, which will be passed by the generator sector to the system operator. In addition, the reduced energy production by the conventional generating
Middle East
driven to adopt more policies that reduce the long-term impacts and promoting more electrification of heating and cooling, developing electrical transportation markets, and adopting time of use tariff. With the development of the storage technologies, nations around the globe like Germany are subsidizing the integration of Lithium ion battery storage at the consumer side, California are increasing the installed Solar PV storage capacity at the generation, transmission, distribution and demand side, and Massachusetts has developed a “Renewable Peak Demand Strategy” driving the integration of more lithium ion battery storage on grid to make more renewable energy available during the peak demand hours by using load shifting. Other advance grid operators in Australia have adopted the Virtual Power Plants (VPP) technologies for the integration of thousands of Solar PV system with storage across the grid that is accessible to the grid operator, which provides on demand energy instead of building new fossil fuel plants. Faced with the dangers of climate change, engineers have the opportunity to use Solar PV energy without GHG emissions, available locally in each country, at the lowest LCOE in the world to meet the demand for more energy, alleviate energy poverty, and improve the economic conditions. Continuous learning, training, awareness, and development of regulatory frameworks and design codes are necessary to face the rapid changes in technologies and the demand for safe and efficient integration of more Solar PV on the Grid.
Nov-Dec Issue 2021 | Pg 33
