Economic viability of grid connection for customer areas with local wind and solar production
Basic information
Project ID: AEE-2017-24
Students: Teemu Nurmi, Pekka Holopainen, Iida Salmivesi, Martin Vidjeskog, Sami Herranen
Project manager: Teemu Nurmi
Instructor: John Millar
Other advisors: Jussi Ekström
Starting date: 5.1.2017
Completion date: 26.05.2017
Objective
The purpose of this study was to investigate whether and when does it make economical sense to join the electricity grid when you have centralized wind and solar power generation of your own. Using the acquired production and consumption data a simulation tool was created which optimizes the different variables to figure the most cost-efficient method to produce energy for the target area under consideration. The simulation tool was also used to explore the “sweet spot”, i.e., when the grid becomes unnecessary (when local demand is equal to the local wind and solar generation) and when it becomes useful again, i.e., when there is surplus or deficit of local generation. The study was implemented by comparing the cost of energy power system for three different customer scenarios in three different production scenarios in Southern Finland.
Summary of results
It was found that in Finnish climate the irregular and volatile production of renewables required a backup production and electricity storage which caused too much cost to be cost effective when comparing to the grid connection for the considered scenarios. From the results it can be determined that the local generation is not economically feasible with the current lifetime costs of renewable production in studied scenarios.
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