EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Rooftop Solar PV, Coal Plant Inflexibility and the Minimum Load Problem

Paul Simshauser () and Phillip Wild

The Energy Journal, 2025, vol. 46, issue 1, 93-118

Abstract: Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM) has amongst the highest take-up rates of rooftop solar PV in the world. As with California, this has produced a distinctive load shape termed the “duck curve.†The Queensland version is being principally driven by non-scheduled (i.e., uncontrolled) rooftop solar PV. When combined with inflexible coal plant, it leads to a “minimum load problem.†In this article, we examine the feasibility of dispatch with ever-expanding rooftop solar PV resources in the NEM’s Queensland region and minimal demand elasticity. We find episodes of intractable dispatch throughout the year with rising intensity in the winter and spring months. Furthermore, we find no ability to “export your way out of the problem†via larger interstate interconnectors because the same problem is emerging in the adjacent region at the same time. Resolution ultimately requires inflexible coal plant exit, and entry of flexible plant. JEL Classification: D25, D80, G32, L51, Q41

Keywords: rooftop solar PV; minimum load problem; inflexible legacy generation; electricity markets; nodal model; direct current optimal power flow (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01956574241283732 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:enejou:v:46:y:2025:i:1:p:93-118

DOI: 10.1177/01956574241283732

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Energy Journal
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().

 
Page updated 2025-05-12
Handle: RePEc:sae:enejou:v:46:y:2025:i:1:p:93-118