Supply of solar electricity to uninterruptible loads via seasonal storage with Power-to-Power systems

In the framework of power sector decarbonization, this work aims at designing a Power-to-Power (P2P) system that allows to supply a given fraction of self-generated electricity from a solar photovoltaic (PV) plant to an uninterruptible 1 MW constant load. A model is set up to size the system components optimizing the annual operation, with the goal of minimizing through a MILP approach the annual average cost of supplying electricity to the load. Results show that, with the present cost of grid electricity and the present investment cost of the P2P system components, the installation of a P2P system able to supply 100% of the demand is not advantageous and the best solution in terms of average electricity cost is obtained by self-generating nearly 30% of the load annually with a simple PV plant. At any rate, to reach high share of self-generation the P2P system becomes mandatory to decouple generation and consumption on both daily and seasonal scale.