Adequacy of Renewable Energy Mixes with Concentrated Solar Power and Photovoltaic in Morocco: Impact of Thermal Storage and Cost

Ayat-allah Bouramdane, Alexis Tantet and Philippe Drobinski
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Ayat-allah Bouramdane: LMD/IPSL, École Polytechnique, IP Paris, Sorbonne Université, ENS, PSL University, CNRS, 91120 Palaiseau, France
Alexis Tantet: LMD/IPSL, École Polytechnique, IP Paris, Sorbonne Université, ENS, PSL University, CNRS, 91120 Palaiseau, France
Philippe Drobinski: LMD/IPSL, École Polytechnique, IP Paris, Sorbonne Université, ENS, PSL University, CNRS, 91120 Palaiseau, France

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 19, 1-34

Abstract: In this paper, we analyze the sensitivity of the optimal mixes to cost and variability associated with solar technologies and examine the role of Thermal Energy Storage (TES) combined to Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) together with time-space complementarity in reducing the adequacy risk—imposed by variable Renewable Energies (RE)—on the Moroccan electricity system. To do that, we model the optimal recommissioning of RE mixes including Photovoltaic (PV), wind energy and CSP without or with increasing levels of TES. Our objective is to maximize the RE production at a given cost, but also to limit the variance of the RE production stemming from meteorological fluctuations. This mean-variance analysis is a bi-objective optimization problem that is implemented in the E4CLIM modeling platform—which allows us to use climate data to simulate hourly Capacity Factors (CFs) and demand profiles adjusted to observations. We adapt this software to Morocco and its four electrical zones for the year 2018, add new CSP and TES simulation modules, perform some load reduction diagnostics, and account for the different rental costs of the three RE technologies by adding a maximum-cost constraint. We find that the risk decreases with the addition of TES to CSP, the more so as storage is increased keeping the mean capacity factor fixed. On the other hand, due to the higher cost of CSP compared to PV and wind, the maximum-cost constraint prevents the increase of the RE penetration without reducing the share of CSP compared to PV and wind and letting the risk increase in return. Thus, if small level of risk and higher penetrations are targeted, investment must be increased to install more CSP with TES. We also show that regional diversification is key to reduce the risk and that technological diversification is relevant when installing both PV and CSP without storage, but less so as the surplus of energy available for TES is increased and the CSP profiles flatten. Finally, we find that, thanks to TES, CSP is more suited than PV and wind to meet peak loads. This can be measured by the capacity credit, but not by the variance-based risk, suggesting that the latter is only a crude representation of the adequacy risk.

Keywords: renewable energy; concentrated solar power; photovoltaic; electricity mix; storage; Morocco (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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