Economic evaluation of integrating photovoltaic plants with National Egyptian Utility

Optimal scheduling of the hydro-thermal and photovoltaic power systems for long range operation is basically a nonlinear programming problem with a nonlinear objective function and a mixture of linear and nonlinear constraints. Several mathematical techniques are, at present, available for solving the long term operation of hydrothermal systems. Some of these methods were applied to multiple types of generation including nuclear and pumped storage systems. Until now, none of these methods was applied to a system composed of hydrothermal and photovoltaic plants. In this research the minimum norm approach is used to solve the optimal operation of photovoltaic plants integrated with hydro and thermal systems. Economic evaluation of integrating PV plants with an existing electric utility is investigated to achieve the best integrated size of PV plants. The method is applied to actual data of both Egyptian National Utility and Egyptian solar radiation.