In this webinar, researchers from the Berkeley Lab discuss new research into the impacts of configuration choices on the recent economics of solar-plus-battery and wind-plus-battery hybrid energy plants. Hybrid power plants, combining generation and battery storage, are catching on. But not all hybrid plants are the same. Different configurations of generators and storage can affect the competitiveness of a plant. Regional and locational market dynamics can determine its relative value and profitability. To explore this development trend, we calculated the costs and revenues of wind and solar hybrids across a wide range of configurations, using historical wholesale market power prices in the seven U.S. organized wholesale power markets from 2012 to 2019. The configurations we looked at varied by battery duration, battery power capacity, size of the grid interconnection capacity relative to the generator power capacity, the size of PV panels relative to the inverter capacity, and the way that batteries and generators are coupled.
You can download the full report and presentation slides here.