Capacity Investment in Renewable Energy Technology with Supply Intermittency: Data Granularity Matters!

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Hu, Shanshan; Souza, Gilvan C.; Ferguson, Mark E.; Wang, Wenbin
• 署名单位: Indiana University System; IU Kelley School of Business; Indiana University Bloomington; University of South Carolina System; University of South Carolina Columbia; Shanghai University of Finance & Economics
• 刊物名称: M&SOM-MANUFACTURING & SERVICE OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1523-4614
• DOI: 10.1287/msom.2015.0536
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 480-494
• 关键词: supply intermittency; renewable energy; CAPACITY INVESTMENT; sustainability

摘要

We study an organization's one-time capacity investment in a renewable energy-producing technology with supply intermittency and net metering compensation. The renewable technology can be coupled with conventional technologies to form a capacity portfolio that is used to meet stochastic demand for energy. The technologies have different initial investments and operating costs, and the operating costs follow different stochastic processes. We show how to reduce this problem to a single-period decision problem and how to estimate the joint distribution of the stochastic factors using historical data. Importantly, we show that data granularity for renewable yield and electricity demand at a fine level, such as hourly, matters: Without energy storage, coarse data that does not reflect the intermittency of renewable generation may lead to an overinvestment in renewable capacity. We obtain solutions that are simple to compute, intuitive, and provide managers with a framework for evaluating the trade-offs of investing in renewable and conventional technologies. We illustrate our model using two case studies: one for investing in a solar rooftop system for a bank branch and another for investing in a solar thermal system for water heating in a hotel, along with a conventional natural gas heating system.