Temporal Solar Photovoltaic Generation Capacity Reduction From Wildfire Smoke

Abstract

Wildfire smoke and other particulate matter can substantially inhibit solar photovoltaic (PV) generation production. While solar PV facilities may not be located in areas with a high fire risk, smoke from wildfires can travel hundreds of kilometers impacting a large number of facilities. This paper proposes a geospatial wildfire PV capacity model to quantify the anticipated temporal reduction in PV capacity due to wildfire smoke. A case study using data for two time periods from the 2020 California wildfires and real utility scale solar generation data evidences the model's high accuracy. Results argue that wildfire smoke can cause significant temporal solar generation capacity reductions over wide geographic regions. Application of the proposed model to inform power system resiliency planning is demonstrated for two use cases: generation scheduling and siting. With meteorological service providers beginning to release smoke forecasts, our geospatial wildfire PV capacity model enables balancing authorities to make use of this information to proactively schedule generation to compensate for reductions in PV capacity. The trained model also produces geospatial derate maps that can enable generation developers to consider historical capacity derates due to smoke when making siting or planning decisions.

Smoke from 2020 United States wildfires responsible for substantial solar energy forecast errors

“…However, due to the smoke plumes persistent over the region during 7, 8, 10, and 11 September, solar power production was reduced compared to typical conditions by approximately 10%-30% during peak production hours (here considered 19-23 UTC or 12-16 Pacific Daylight Time (PDT)). Our findings agree well with those from previous studies focused on wildfire smoke impacts on solar reduction [22,36], including during the 2020 season in the Western U.S. [20,61]. In contrast, 9 September and the 12-16 September period featured solar production much closer to what is expected under typical conditions (less than 7% reduction) because the smoke plumes were transported out of the region.…”

“…We will demonstrate the smoke effects during extreme wildfire conditions that plagued the Western U.S. in 2020. While recent studies examined the reduction in solar energy during to the 2020 wildfires [20,22,61], to the authors' best knowledge, this is the first study to investigate explicitly the impact of wildfire smoke on solar energy forecasts using a mesoscale NWP model.…”

Investment Risk Management of Solar Photovoltaic Power Generation Project Based on Wireless Sensor Network

“…The functions of the TMS320LF2812 series controller used are as follows: complete the sampling of the output side AC voltage, AC current, and the input side DC voltage analog quantity, and then perform calculation processing; set the state detection function. In order to avoid device damage, overcurrent, overvoltage, undervoltage and other protection functions are set to ensure normal operation of the inverter; closed-loop control algorithm is used, so that the output voltage can track the set voltage in real time, so that the system output characteristics are normal [15] .…”

Solar energy resource availability under extreme and historical wildfire smoke conditions

“…Average PV output declined 34% over two days at a PV plant in Spain due to smoke [23], 7% at a solar lab in Australia during a controlled burn when AOD reached 0.25 (-27% at peak) [24], and ~10-50% at southern California solar plants during the 2020 wildfire season when AOD ranged from 0.5 -4.5 [25]. Examinations of solar resource and forecast models demonstrate the need to include aerosol parameters that account for smoke.…”