Investigation of Daytime Peak Loads to Improve the Power Generation Costs of Solar-Integrated Power Systems

Improving daytime loads can mitigate some of the challenges posed by solar variations in solar-integrated power systems. Thus, this simulation study investigated the different levels of daytime peak loads under varying solar penetration conditions in solar-integrated power systems to improve power generation cost performance based on different load profiles and to mitigate the challenges encountered due to solar variation. The daytime peak loads during solar photovoltaic generation hours were determined by measuring the solar load correlation coefficients between each load profile and the solar irradiation, and the generation costs were determined using a dynamic economic dispatch method with particle swarm optimization in a MATLAB environment. The results revealed that the lowest generation costs were generally associated with load profiles that had low solar load correlation coefficients. Conversely, the load profile with the highest positive solar load correlation coefficient exhibited the highest generation costs, which were mainly associated with violations of the supply-demand balance requirement. However, this profile also exhibited the lowest generation costs at high levels of solar penetration. This result indicates that improving daytime load management could improve generation costs under high solar penetration conditions. However, if the generation system lacks sufficient ramping capability, this technique could pose operational challenges that adversely impact power generation costs.