Assisting in Matching Nevada Power Company’s Electrical Load Profiles With High Concentration PV Systems

This paper investigates how a point focus solar plant such as the Amonix High Concentration Photovoltaic (HCPV) solar system can assist in decreasing a utility’s peak demand load. Utilizing the HCPV generating system during Nevada Power Company’s (NPC), a southern Nevada electric utility, summer load period provides the basis for this investigation. NPC’s peak load occurs between June 1^st and September 30^th during the hours of 1:00P.M. to 7:00 P.M. The electric load profiles presented herein are representative data points collected over years 2004 and 2005. Part of the study investigated the impact of various factors such as temperature, humidity, wind, and solar insolation, upon NPC’s peak demand load and the performance of the HCPV. A main consideration of the study was to see if NPC could rely on such a solar plant to effectively reduce the peak load. A second part of this study was to investigate ways to improve the performance of a solar plant to ensure it would be a reliable contributor to decreasing the utility peak load. The focus of this part of the investigation was to review various methods of storage, where power from the HCPV could be generated and stored during off-peak periods and used to shore up the peak demand periods or even augment the amount of demand load that could be offset. Energy storage methods considered are: • Hydrogen, – Metal hydrides, – Compressed hydrogen, – Carbon nanotubes, – Glass microspheres, • Flywheels, • Compressed air energy storage, • Batteries.