Abhatoo - Centre Nationale de Documentation

It appears that at the moment, many countries tend to favor Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) combined with its low-cost Thermal Energy Storage (TES) system over Photovoltaic (PV) as it can enhance the resilience of their energy system. However, their interplay in optimal mixes has not yet been addressed deeply enough by any study and particularly to confirm this perception in future warming climate. For instance, if the judging criteria is only money, does PV stand at a leading position? but, it is not fairly to justify those two technologies merely by cost but also by the correlation of production with peak consumption. Here comes another question : PV or its counterpart CSP? as they have distinct sensitivity to temperature and clouds. Moreover, if PV is coupled with expensive Battery Energy Storage (BES), does this mean CSP-TES will be replaced by PV-BES? This thesis discusses a set of scenarios of large-scale solar integration with wind in optimal Moroccan prospective mix under different penetration levels, storage configurations and combinations of renewable (RE) technologies. We take as objective not only to maximize the RE production, but also to reduce its variability. This Mean-Variance approach is implemented in the E4CLIM model, which we have adapted to the four Moroccan electricity zones to fit the demand model and correct biases in the Capacity Factors (CFs) calculated using climate data; ignoring the grid constraints and exchanges of electricity with neighboring countries. We add a maximum-total cost constraint to the optimization problem; and propose a method to define the rental cost of each production technology taking their dependence on the hours of production into account, which is designed in the developed storage model implemented to BES and to the added CSP-TES modules.
We present, for each penetration regime, some ratios that contribute to determine what region a given capacity will be assigned to; and propose some production-demand adequacy diagnostics to evaluate which technology displaces more expensive fossil fuel generators during peak, mid and base load hours; and which one increase or reduce the curtailment. The first study addresses the questions associated with wind/PV/CSP/CSP-TES integration while the second study determines the conditions under which CSP-TES can provide an advantage against PV-BES so as to be part of the mix until a more advantageous condition prevents its integration; by examining how the integration of CSP and storage would influence the benefits from time-space complementarity in the actual climate. We conclude that contrary to the integration of CSP/CSP-TES with PV, the addition of BES to PV reveals a higher sensitivity of the mixes to solar technologies not only at low penetrations due to the reduced variability but also at high penetrations due to the differences in the storage capacity and cost. Finally, the third study assesses the impact of climate change on the resources and their implications on CFs and demand by the end-21st century relative to the historical observed forcing. We find that there are some indications of a potential impact in mixes with high penetrations but which are trivial with the eventual cost reduction effect on capacity pathways projected by climate models. However, climate change is unlikely to have a discernible effect on optimal mixes with low proportions of REs, but the key message is that the future impact on each technology is considered to be highly uncertain. We discuss the sources of uncertainty and the main options for climate-resilient RE mixes.