Enhancing solar farm viability through power-to-ice for cold chain logistics: techno-economic comparison against battery energy storage for curtailment reduction

This study proposed and evaluated a novel power-to-ice (P2I) system to address the economic challenge of high photovoltaic (PV) curtailment, which converted curtailed electricity into ice slurry for cold chain applications, offering an economically superior alternative to conventional battery energy storage system (BESS). A techno-economic model was developed to compare a 510 MW PV farm under three configurations: standalone operation (Case 1, 21% curtailment), integration with BESS to limit the curtailment at 5% (Case 2), and integration with the hybrid BESS and P2I system under varying ice slurry demand scenarios from 0.1 to 3.0 Mt/year to limit the curtailment at 5% (Case 3). The results indicated that Case 2 exhibited a non-ideal payback period of 14.8 years, which was longer than the 12.7 years of Case 1. By contrast, with sufficient ice slurry demand, the P2I system dramatically improved economic performance. For the high-demand scenario in Case 3 ( i.e. , Case 3-Max), the payback period was reduced to 4 years, with a net present value of $1109.6 million. A minimum ice slurry demand of approximately 0.25 Mt/year corresponding to an ice slurry system power capacity of 5.8 MW was identified for the power-to-ice system to reach the comparable payback period as the original PV farm ( i.e. , Case 1). The core finding is that converting and valorizing curtailed PV energy as a marketable cold product for adjacent fisheries and agriculture is substantially more profitable than storing electricity for grid re-injection. The innovation of this study not only lies in the proposal of P2I for excessive PV power accommodation, but also derives from identifying its feasible deployment boundary for cold chain logistics using seawater-based ice slurry. This provides a supplementary solution for PV farms in regions like coastal areas where high curtailment coincides with significant cooling demand.