Effective integration of Hybrid Solar and Storage plants to Provide Maximum Value

Background, Description, Delivery and Learning Objective There is a significant increase in the development of utility-scale hybrid solar and storage plants driven by cost-reduction and policy incentives. By enabling a variety of grid services that are typically associated with conventional generation resources these hybrid plants provide considerable benefits both to the plant owner as well as to the grid. The grid services include PV firming, dispatchable capacity, up and down regulation, spinning reserves, AGC (Automated Generation Control), system flexibility and so on. To achieve all these capabilities in a flexible manner a smart hybrid plant controller that manages the power flow amongst various components in real-time is critical. The controller receives ISO dispatch commands based upon the awarded bids for various services. It manages the power flow amongst various components to meet the overall plant dispatch instructions while ensuring that no constraints are violated. It also enables the owner to easily switch between various service options to maximizes the market value derived from the plant. In this poster, we describe such a hybrid plant controller architecture and tts major components -- the PV plant controller, BESS EMS (Energy Management System) and BMS (Battery Management System). This controller has already been successfully proven at several large utility-scale PV+Storage hybrid plants. The poster will highlight some of the field results along with examples of how plant’s full value is optimized. The target audience for this poster are hybrid plant developers and owners.