Potential of building-integrated photovoltaic solar energy generators in assisting daytime peaking feeders in urban areas in Brazil

Because of the intermittent nature of the solar radiation resource, photovoltaic (PV) solar energy generation is considered a non-dispatchable power source. However, under some conditions, in sunny urban areas with electricity load curves dominated by air conditioning loads, there is a high correlation between PV generation and utility feeder loads. In these situations, a considerable fraction of a given PV generator can be considered dispatchable power. In this work, we assess the potential of grid connected, building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) generation in the state capital, Florianópolis, in south Brazil (27 °S, 48 °W), which is supplied by the local utility company through 56 feeders. Our interest was to identify which feeder could obtain more benefits with implementation of a PV plant with a specific nominal power. Two factors are important in this analysis: the peak demand reduction value, and the LOLP (loss of load probability, in failures per year), or LOLE (loss of load expectation, in hours per year). We analyzed the hourly demand curves of the 56 feeders and compared them with the PV power generation values obtained from a 2 kW_pBIPV installation that has been operating continuously for nearly 10 years connected to one of these feeders. For our calculations, we defined a PV installation of 1000 kWp_AC, which corresponds to penetration level values between 10% and 20%, depending on the specific feeder considered. Our results demonstrate that the use of PV power plants can reduce significantly the summer demand peaks in regions where the load reflects commercial customers demand for midday air conditioning.