Impact Analysis of Duck Curve Phenomena with Renewable Energies and Storage Technologies

Abstract

When higher quantities of solar energy is injected into power grid, then it is likely to result in what is known as "Duck curve phenomena". The net load under this phenomenon is negative and thus energy generation needs to be curtailed during the peak hours and also a part of the load during off-peak hours cannot be met. Due to several economical and technical challenges, the environmentally friendly solar energy source will be switched-off during the peak hours. Analyzing the impact of duck curve on a system can be challenging. This paper presents a novel methodology to analyze the duck curve phenomena and to mitigate its effects. The proposed methodology requires two popular, open source software tools -IRENA FlexTool and System Advisory Model (SAM). SAM is used to obtain the data for solar energy production and FlexTool is used carryout the optimal energy dispatch. A 4-bus power system is considered with base load plants, renewable energy sources and energy storage facilities. Then the proposed methodology is applied on this system to analyze the impact of duck curve to demonstrate the effectiveness of both the methodology and the open-source tools.