Considering PV Economic Scale in Generation Expansion Planning for RE Integration Acceleration: Centralized PV VS Distributed PV

The need for energy sources, particularly electrical energy, continues to increase every year. Currently, the entire world, including Indonesia, is engaged in energy planning with a steadfast commitment to expedite the transition towards clean and renewable energy sources. Currently, to support the energy transition, the planning of renewable energy power plants, especially PV PP, is increasing significantly. In current planning, PV PP is designed in both large and small scales. To facilitate the cost-effective integration of PV PP into the power system, a techno-economic comparison of PV PP scales is necessary. This paper focuses on optimizing photovoltaic (PV) generators in the generation planning process to enhance PV penetration and the integration of distributed generators. The optimization process will consider both fully distributed PV power plants and centralized PV power plants at several points. The contribution of this paper lies in providing an insight into the optimal capacity scale schemes of PV power plants in planning to enhance the integration of distributed generators. The research findings indicate that Centralized PV PP can produce 7% more energy compared to Distributed PV PP. With electricity generation reaching 166,440 MWh per year, it can provide a lower LCOE of $0.48/kWh compared to distributed PV PP, which reaches $0.78/kWh.