Meeting state hourly load profile

I would like to size Utility Scale PV Systems to meet the Hourly Load Profiles of different states in the US without using specific modules or inverters. It might be a good idea to consider the worst case (lowest PV efficiency of Thin Films and typical inverter conversion rate ?). The main goal of the research is to study the reliability and the performance advantages of interconnecting different PV farms in different states together with some optimization analysis.

The main issue is that I don't know which financing option should I choose. Remember that the main goal is to meet the Hourly load profiles (in thousands of MWh) for each state. I went through the help about financing options and I noticed that the Load Profiles could be enetred only for Residential and Commercial but I am not sure if this is the correct option for my case.

Hello,

For the performance model, you could either use the PVWatts model where you specify the overall system efficiency, or you could use the flat-plate PV model with the simple efficiency module model and single-point efficiency inverter model if you wanted the ability to model different sizes of PV array and inverter bank without using specific modules and inverters.

For the financial model, if I understand what you are trying to do, I think you should use one of the utility financing models to determine what PPA price would be required to meet project costs. You may want to start with the Utility IPP model, and then try the single owner or one of the other "advanced" models after you understand the results from the Utility IPP model.

You could either model all of the PV systems in a given state as a single system in SAM for a rough estimate, or model a set of individual systems for each state. The former approach would require choosing a weather file to adequately represent the aggregate resource, which might be tricky. In either case, you could then export the system hourly output data from SAM and use Excel or some other tool to compare the data to the state load profile data to see how much of the load the PV systems meet.

The residential and commercial financial models in SAM assume that the renewable energy system meets all or part of a building load that you specify as an input. The project sells excess electricity to the grid, and buys electricity from the grid when the system cannot meet the load. I don't think either of those models would be appropriate for this analysis.

Best regards,
Paul.