Curtailment of solar photovoltaics (PV) could increase significantly as PV composes greater shares of grid capacity. Curtailment risk—the possibility that future curtailment levels exceed projections—poses a challenge to PV project economics. PV industry stakeholders have begun to develop new contract structures that may address curtailment risk more optimally than conventional structures. Using a simplified theoretical framework and modeled results, we analyze PV project economics in the context of increasing curtailment risk under alternative contract structures with fixed and time-of-delivery payments. We show that both alternative structures tend to shift curtailment risk from generators to electricity buyers. Electricity buyers—particularly utilities—may be willing to bear that additional risk in order to reap higher and more diverse project values facilitated by fixed-payment and time-of-delivery contracts. Our results suggest that these alternative structures provide new ways to redistribute curtailment risk in the context of increasing PV curtailment.

随着光伏在电网容量中所占份额的增加，太阳能光伏（PV）的削减可能会显着增加。削减风险（未来削减水平可能超过预期的可能性）对光伏项目的经济构成了挑战。光伏行业的利益相关者已经开始开发新的合同结构，该合同结构可能比常规结构更能更好地应对削减风险。使用简化的理论框架和建模结果，我们在固定和交货时间为替代的合同结构下，在削减风险增加的情况下分析了光伏项目的经济性。我们表明，两种替代结构都倾向于将削减成本的风险从发电机转移到购电者。电力购买者（尤其是公用事业公司）可能愿意承担额外的风险，以便通过固定付款和交货时间合同获得更高，更多样化的项目价值。我们的结果表明，这些替代结构在增加PV削减的情况下提供了重新分配削减风险的新方法。