The Impact of Short-term Stochastic Variability in Solar Irradiance on Optimal Microgrid Design

This paper proposes a new methodology to capture the impact of fast moving clouds on utility power demand charges observed in microgrids with photovoltaic (PV) arrays, generators, and electrochemical energy storage. It consists of a statistical approach to introduce sub-hourly events in the hourly economic accounting process. The methodology is implemented in the Distributed Energy Resources Customer Adoption Model (DER-CAM), a state of the art mixed integer linear model used to optimally size DER in decentralized energy systems. Results suggest that previous iterations of DER-CAM could undersize battery capacities . The improved model depicts more accurately the economic value of PV as well as the synergistic benefits of pairing PV with storage.