Daily Solar Energy Estimation for Minimizing Energy Storage Requirements in PV Power Plants

This paper proposes an optimized energy management strategy (EMS) for photovoltaic (PV) power plants with energy storage (ES) based on the estimation of the daily solar energy production. This EMS produces a constant-by-hours power reference which mitigates the stochastic nature of PV production typically associated to the solar resource, and enables PV power plants to take part in the day and intraday electricity markets. The possibility of using the intraday market sessions to refine the plant's power reference paves the way to minimizing the energy capacity ratings of the ES system required to operate the PV power plant without incurring excessive production deviations. This proposal is analyzed on an annual basis using actual irradiance data and theoretical irradiance models extracted from official databases.