Improving Duck Curve Profile, Enabling Peak-shaving and Increasing Self-sufficiency by Properly Designing Community Solar Projects

Community solar consisting of rooftop photovoltaic systems (RPVs) and battery energy storage systems, when designed properly, can address and solve many of the design and adoptability challenges brought by the individual RPVs and battery energy storage. Such systems can benefit many of the remote and rural communities, that are usually supplied by diesel generators, or long traditional distribution lines, which in addition to being expensive often don't provide the reliability at desired level. These systems can also benefit most of the urban areas since the unmanaged penetration of RPVs has resulted in the undesired duck curve profile in the network. To this end, this paper proposes and verifies the appropriate design criteria for community solar projects with an aim to improve the network duck curve profile, enable peak-shaving and increase the self-sufficiency of the community.