Transmission Benefits of Co-Locating Concentrating Solar Power and Wind

In some areas of the U.S. transmission constraints are a limiting factor in deploying new wind and concentrating solar power (CSP) plants. Texas is an example of one such location, where the best wind and solar resources are in the western part of the state, while major demand centers are in the east. The low capacity factor of wind is a compounding factor, increasing the relative cost of newtransmission per unit of energy actually delivered. A possible method of increasing the utilization of new transmission is to co-locate both wind and concentrating solar power with thermal energy storage. In this work we examine the benefits and limits of using the dispatachability of thermal storage to increase the capacity factor of new transmission developed to access high quality solar andwind resources in remote locations.