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Improved Cost, Reliability, and Grid Integration of High Concentration Photovoltaic Systems

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California Solar Initiative Research, Development, Demonstration and Deployment Program RD&D : Final Project Report: Improving Cost, Reliability and Grid Integration of High-Concentration Photovoltaic Systems Grantee: Amonix, Inc. January 2015 www.CalSolarResearch.ca.gov PREPARED BY 1709 Apollo Court Seal Beach, CA 90740 Principal Investigators: Project Partners: Robert McConnell University of California, Irvine (UCI) Amonix Director of Government Projects National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) rmcconnell @ amonix.com U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Southern California Edison (SCE) PREPARED FOR California Public Utilities Commission California Solar Initiative: Research, Development, Demonstration, and Deployment Program CSI RD&D PROGRAM MANAGER Program Manager: Project Manager: Smita Gupta Stephan Barsun Smita.Gupta @ itron.com Stephan.Barsun @ itron.com DISCLAIMER “Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CPUC, Itron, Inc. or the CSI RD&D Program.” Additional information and links to project related documents can be found at http://www.calsolarresearch.ca.gov/Funded-Projects/ Preface The goal of the California Solar Initiative (CSI) Research, Development, Demonstration, and Deployment (RD&D) Program is to foster a sustainable and self-supporting customer-sited solar market. To achieve this, the California Legislature authorized the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to allocate $50 million of the CSI budget to an RD&D program. Strategically, the RD&D program seeks to leverage cost-sharing funds from other state, federal and private research entities, and targets activities across these four stages: • Grid integration, storage, and metering: 50-65% • Production technologies: 10-25% • Business development and deployment: 10-20% • Integration of energy efficiency, demand response, and storage with photovoltaics (PV) There are seven key principles that guide the CSI RD&D Program: 1. Improve the economics of solar technologies by reducing technology costs and increasing system performance; 2. Focus on issues that directly benefit California, and that may not be funded by others; 3. Fill knowledge gaps to enable successful, wide-scale deployment of solar distributed generation technologies; 4. Overcome significant barriers to technology adoption; 5. Take advantage of California’s wealth of data from past, current, and future installations to fulfill the above; 6. Provide bridge funding to help promising solar technologies transition from a pre-commercial state to full commercial viability; and 7. Support efforts to address the integration of distributed solar power into the grid in order to maximize its value to California ratepayers. For more information about the CSI RD&D Program, please visit the program web site at www.calsolarresearch.ca.gov. Improving Cost, Reliability and Grid Integration of High-Concentration Photovoltaic Systems Amonix, Inc. Acknowledgements Several organizations contributed to the success of this project through the efforts of their staff. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and Amonix, Inc., provided financial support. Stephan Barsun (Itron, Inc.) guided the project through changes necessitated by DOE contract requirements and University of California Irvine’s careful site selection studies that listened to residents who would be living near the large Amonix concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) power plants. Stephan’s guidance and that of Ann Peterson (Itron) were critical to this project’s success. Professor Scott Samuelsen, Director of the Advanced Power and Energy Program (APEP) at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), APEP Deputy Director Jack Brouwer, and their team of systems research engineers and graduate students conducted the electrical systems research needed to understand the impact of an innovative solar electric technology operating in a Southern California Edison (SCE) distribution grid. UCI’s Richard Demerjian in the UCI Chancellor’s office conducted the site selection studies, whose principal benefit was the total lack of neighborhood complaints when the large Amonix CPV systems were installed. Dr. Sarah Kurtz, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Research Fellow and Reliability & Systems Engineering Group Manager, and reliability scientists Drs. Nick Bosco and Timothy Silverman conducted fundamental research that identified a thermal cycling model that could be correlated with concentrator solar cell lifetime. DOE co-funded NREL’s development of the thermal fatigue model, which is described in this report. This model was incorporated into an international CPV standards project approved by over 20 countries participating in the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Technical Committee 82 (Solar photovoltaic energy systems), Working Group 7, which is responsible for developing IEC standards for concentrator modules. Amonix reliability engineers, Robert Gordon and Henry Gomez, conducted field failure analyses to separate Amonix field failures into design, manufacturing quality assurance, and lifetime categories for correlation with accelerated environmental chamber testing at both NREL and Amonix. Mr. Vahan Garboushian, founder of Amonix provided technical guidance and support for two Amonix 7700 CPV power plants for UCI’s grid integration studies and the reliability studies conducted by both Amonix and NREL. Garboushian’s decades of CPV experience directly influenced the project’s focus on longer solar cell lifetimes to lower levelized cost of energy (LCOE). DOE shared the cost of the two systems with Amonix. Mr. Brian Robertson, Amonix CEO, provided enthusiastic support and guidance for this project until his untimely death in December 2011. Thanks to all of the organizations and individuals for their support and expert contributions. 2 Improving Cost, Reliability and Grid Integration of High-Concentration Photovoltaic Systems Amonix, Inc. Table of Contents: Acknowledgements ..........................................................................................................................2 Abbreviations and Acronyms…………………………………………………………………… ..5 Executive Summary .........................................................................................................................7 1.0 Improving Cost, Reliability and Grid Integration of CPV Systems ..........................................9 1.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................9 1.1.1 Background .............................................................................................................................9 2.1 Task 1 Grid Integration of CPV Systems ................................................................................10 2.1.1 Background ...........................................................................................................................10 2.1.2 Objective ...............................................................................................................................11 2.1.3 Approach ...............................................................................................................................12 2.1.4 Results ...................................................................................................................................12 2.1.4.1 CPV System Manufacture and Installation ........................................................................12 2.1.4.1.1 Early Plans for Additional Systems ................................................................................16 2.1.4.1.2 Lessons Learned..............................................................................................................16 2.1.4.2 Distributed CPV Electrical Interconnection and Operation of the Campus’ Energy Systems with Regard to the Installed Campus CPV Resources ....................................................16 2.1.4.2.1 UCI Microgrid System Description ................................................................................17 2.1.4.2.2 Amonix CPV 7700 ..........................................................................................................18 3 Improving Cost, Reliability and Grid Integration of High-Concentration Photovoltaic Systems Amonix, Inc. 2.1.4.2.3 Additional UCI Solar Resources .....................................................................................18 2.1.4.3 Data Collection ..................................................................................................................20 2.1.4.3.1 Amonix Metering and Weather Station ..........................................................................20 2.1.4.3.2 MelRok Metering System ...............................................................................................20 2.1.4.3.3 Electrical Transient Analysis Program (ETAP) ..............................................................20 2.1.4.4 CPV Performance ..............................................................................................................22 2.1.4.5 CPV Impact Assessment on UC-9 using ETAP ................................................................25 2.1.5 Conclusions ..........................................................................................................................34 2.1.6 Coordination with RESCO and SCE ...................................................................................35
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