Proposal Papers for Policy Making and Governmental Action toward Low Carbon Society

LCS-FY2019-PP-11

An Analysis on Utilizing SOFC to Provide Reserve Capability for Power Systems

  • SDGs7
  • SDGs9
  • SDGs11
  • SDGs13

Summary

 This paper aims at analyzing potentials for SOFC to provide reserve capabilities. For this analysis, we first developed a model of stochastic unit commitment planning including all power generation plants in Kyushu electric utilities, taking errors in projecting photovoltaic outputs.

 Prices of reserve capabilities were estimated, using the above stochastic unit commitment planning model. Next we developed a model to minimize energy cost for households with SOFC. Then the prices of upward reserve capabilities were used to clarify the difference between optimal operation patterns with and without revenues for providing the reserve capabilities. It was concluded that the optimal operation pattern of SOFC was modified by the revenue and that the upward reserve capability could be provided. The results of this analysis revealed that the provision of reserve capability by SOFC is promising, and that it could be socially implemented in near future.
 As a policy proposal, social experiments based on the analytic results of this document are recommended. If we take the system compensating imbalances resulting from forecast errors in photovoltaic outputs into consideration, we need to perform the social experiments to combine aggregated SOFCs, which we could remotely control, with aggregated roof-top PVs, on which we have the weather forecast information and actual PV outputs. The social experiments will clarify how we could establish profitable business models in other regions, and activate innovations for realizing decarbonized societies.

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