Az SMART is a unique educational tool that crosses silos of issues to seamlessly produce an integrated macro-view of the impact of new utility-scale and distributed generation solar installations from a siting, environmental and economic perspective with a transmission overview.
Primarily targeted at solar developers, policy planners, government agencies and utility companies, Az SMART examines multiple solar installation scenarios, considering key inputs such as demand profiles, PV efficiency levels, transmission investment, costs and incentives, to provide real-world solar development results.
The current 3-year goals of Az SMART are to:
- Develop a comprehensive utility-scale analysis tool, tailored to the examination of a successful solar integration strategy in Arizona, which draws from a series of scenarios supplied by the state’s utilities to produce an annual macro overview of the siting, environmental and economic impact of new solar installations during a typical year.
- Develop a web-based, portable version of the utility-scale tool.
- Create a separate, standalone prototype tool using data from ASU, the University of Arizona and Flagstaff, to simulate the volatility of a potential distributed generation system, which calculates emissions savings, costs, and other environmental or economic benefits.
The focus to date has been upon the completion of the utility-scale tool, and the development of a distributed generation tool.
In Year 3, Az SMART will use utility scenarios to evaluate the potential location and size of solar deployment in two key corridors, taking into consideration current generation needs, land use potential, environmental concerns, transmission build look-out, permitting, the solar development pipeline, technology and economic impact. These corridors are Yuma – Gila Bend – Harquahala (APS) and Southeast Arizona/Pinal County (SRP).
For distributed generation, work will continue upon the development of four key modules for PV installation, profit, power system impacts and storage. This will culminate in the development of a standalone prototype tool that simulates system volatility and calculates environmental and economic benefits.