Cleared capacity Merchant Plant

Hi Paul,

I have a queation about the concept of cleared capacity that SAM uses in Merchant Plan.

Does it mean the amount of discharge capacity which is reserved to a certain service, so that only the remaining available capacity could be used for the other potential services? 

Thanks in advance

Hi Javier,

Yes, that is correct.

There is a section in the Help topic for the Merchant Plant model Revenue page that shows example compensation scenarios that might help explain how the cleared capacity works. You need to expand that section to see the scenarios and explanations:



Best regards,
Paul.

Great!
Thank you so much.
Javier

Hi Paul,

Another doubt about this item:

I am trying to simulate a standalone battery setting 0% nominal capacity factor of a generic power plant (it also could be done setting a 100% plant loss as you indicated in the past round table). In this way, I am providing a time series prices for energy market under Merchant Plan model and I would like SAM to get when the battery should charge from the grid and discharge to the grid in order to maximize revenues. For this issue, I thought that if I set the storage dispatch controller of Battery Dispatch menu to "Automated" I could let SAM optimize when the battery should charge from the grid and when to discharge (see figure 1 attached bellow).

However, it seems that SAM continue to ask for the cleared capacity to set in each time step of the energy market revenue table (see figure 2 attached), as if the user was the one who has to decide how to operate the baterry in each time step. It seems confused, becuase I expected that under the "Automated storage dispatch controller option" SAM would be able to decide itself when the battery should charge from the grid and when to discharge in order to maximize revenues in the energy market.

Is it not possible to let SAM optimize the baterry operation to avoid the user has to decide the operation mode?

Thanks in advance

Figure 1




Figure 2

Hi Javier,

SAM's battery dispatch algorithms do not consider the cleared capacity for the merchant plant model. The automated dispatch option responds to the total power price in each time step (sum of Energy and Ancillary service prices), but not the cleared capacity.

As it is currently implemented, the battery dispatch options are not very well suited for the merchant plant financial model.

Best regard,s
Paul.

Hi Paul, 

So you mean that the automated dispatch options should let SAM decide how to operate the battery (charge/discharge/standby) depending on the total power price in each time step, without considering the item of cleared capacity, but is currently unable to do properly for the merchant plant financial model?

Does it mean that SAM do be able to optimize automatically the operation mode for PPA financial model, for example? In that case, why can it do properly for PPA financial model but not for the merchat plant model? Is the item of cleared capacity that is confusing  SAM's battery automated dispatch algorithms? 

I have heard that the next released version of SAM, planned for fall 2021, will provide a new standalone battery model. Do you know if this new version will provide the possibility that automated dispatch options works properly for the merchant plant financial model so the cleared capacity does not apply and the battery could decide when charge /discharge/standby just responding to the total power price in each time step?

Thank you for your kindness and patience in answering .