1. Nader Samaan Xinda Ke Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)
Development of the Utility-Scale PV Solar Profiles for the TEPPC 2026 Case
Nader Samaan
Xinda Ke
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)
WECC Data Work Group (DWG),
June 13, Revised June 27, 2017
Web Conference
June 27, 2017

2. Background WECC subcontracted with PNNL to
develop solar profiles for individual utility-scale photovoltaic (PV) solar plants at WECC for the TEPPC 2026 case using NREL’s Solar Integration National Dataset (SIND).
The scope excludes developing time series of concentrated solar power (CSP) plants, which are not available in NREL SIND.
develop wind profiles for future wind plants in the United States using NREL’s Wind Integration Data Sets
develop wind profiles for Canadian locations using GE wind profiles.
All wind and solar profiles will be based on year 2009 weather models.
Python codes used to develop the time series for wind and solar will be delivered to WECC staff for future use.

3. Solar Integration National Dataset (SIND).
NREL provided PNNL with the Solar Integration National Dataset (SIND).
The solar database includes
7 years (2007 to 2013) of virtual solar profiles with 30-min time resolution in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)
154,868 virtual solar sites at different coordinates covering the United States.
All virtual solar plants have 4 MW of DC capacity. The maximum AC capacity will be between 3.5 MW and 3.7 MW.
All files are in .h5 hierarchical data format.
Three types of solar profiles are provided:
rooftop
fixed
tracking.

4. TEPPC Solar Projects Data
Jamie Austin (PacifiCorp), Kevin Harries (Columbia Grid), and other TEPPC stakeholders provided PNNL with publicly available coordinates, bus numbers, and technologies of the solar projects in the TEPPC 2026 case.
It contains 320* solar projects at different coordinates.
These include four types of solar profiles: fixed, single, double, and NA.
These will be used to develop solar profiles by using virtual solar profiles from NREL. The four solar categories in TEPPC are matched with virtual solar categories in the database.
TEPPC categories fixed and NA ↔ NREL category fixed
TEPPC categories single and double ↔ category tracking
229 fixed solar projects
320 solar projects
84 tracking solar projects
*7 solar projects with zero capacity are ignored.

5. Solar Plant Capacity Discrepancy (an example)
In some cases, two different values were provided for solar plant capacity; most of the time they have the same value. Internet search was used to verify capacity in cases of discrepancy.
Scaling

6. Selection of SIND Solar Sites for each TEPPC Solar Project
Step 1: For each TEPPC solar project, select closest SIND solar sites based on capacity and coordinates.
Step 2: For each TEPPC solar project, record the number of SIND sites selected and calculate the scaling factor.
Scaling factor = solar project capacity / sum of virtual sites’ maximum AC capacities
You can explain , the first generator has capa

7. How Far are the Selected SIND Sites from the TEPPC Plant Location?
We developed three different sets of time series to understand which of the following approaches is better, through validation:
Choose unique NREL sites; no limitation on how far they are from the plant location.
Put a 3-mile limit on the distance; if there are not enough NREL profiles within 3 miles, scale the time series up.
Put a 5-mile limit on the distance.
Example – 290 MW plant
No distance limit:
Number of selected NREL sites: Maximum distance: 20 miles
5-mile limit:
Number of selected NREL sites: Maximum distance: 4.4 miles
3-mile limit:
Number of selected NREL sites: Maximum distance: 2.6 miles
You can explain , the first generator has capa

8. Development of TEPPC Solar Profiles
Step 1: For each TEPPC solar project, generate solar profiles for two years (2009 and 2013) by using the selected SIND solar sites and the scaling factor.
Extract solar profiles for all selected SIND solar sites from the solar database.
Sum the extracted solar profiles and multiply by the scaling factor.
Step 2: Construct the time stamp for the generated solar profile. The time zone is moved from UTC to Mountain time.
Step 3: Generate the 30-min and hourly solar profiles by averaging the original 30-min solar profile.
You can explain , the first generator has capa

9. Comparison between profiles of the three approaches
In sunny days there are no differences
In cloudy days, there is a slight difference
That is mainly because we are comparing hourly values, so minute to minute differences are not captured.
You can explain , the first generator has capa

10. Impact of Oversizing the Solar Plant Panels by 10%
You can explain , the first generator has capa
Based on validation with actual data, should this assumption be used for all PV solar plants?
It will result in more output energy and flat output for few hours in sunny days

11. Data Availability
The developed data is available to TEPPC stakeholders.
If you would like access to the data, please contact Nader Samaan: