Modeling Utility-Scale Wind Power Plants, Part 1: Economics

As the worldwide use of wind turbine generators continues to increase in utility-scale applications, it will become increasingly important to assess the economic and reliability impact of these intermittent resources. Although the utility industry in the United States appears to be moving towards a restructured environment, basic economic and reliability issues will continue to be relevant tocompanies involved with electricity generation. This paper is the first of two that address modeling approaches and results obtained in several case studies and research projects at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). This first paper addresses the basic economic issues associated with electricity production from several generators that include large-scale wind power plants. Animportant part of this discussion is the role of unit commitment and economic dispatch in production-cost models. This paper includes overviews and comparisons of the prevalent production-cost modeling methods, including several case studies applied to a variety of electric utilities. The second paper discusses various methods of assessing capacity credit and results from severalreliability-based studies performed at NREL.