Power management for improved dispatch of utility-scale PV plants

This paper proposes a rule-based power management algorithm to enable the dispatch of a utility-scale PV power plant consisting of a hybrid energy storage system, in accordance with the Australian national electricity rules. This algorithm is purposely designed to regulate the instantaneous power of a PV plant with the same level of dispatchability as conventional power plants. Additionally, the proposed algorithm is robust under large forecasting errors (up to 60%) of solar irradiance and it can be easily implemented in practice. Specifically, this algorithm can be executed within seconds even when considering detailed market operation and model nonlinearities. A 30 MW PV plant, including a 7.5 MW/1.25 MWh vanadium redox battery and a 1.5 MW/0.25 MWh suppercapacitors bank, has been modeled using MATLAB/Simulink and PLECS software environment. The simulation results were based on various scenarios and confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed power management algorithm. It has been shown that even in the worst-case scenario of solar forecasting error of 60%, the proposed algorithm still managed to deliver over 94% of the available energy for a given solar irradiance profile of one month.