Decentralized renewable energy systems can be low-carbon power sources, and promoters of local economies. It is often argued that decentralized generation also helps reducing transmission costs, as generation is closer to the load, thus utilizing the transmission system less. The research presented here addresses the question whether or not, or under what circumstances this effect of avoided transmission can actually be seen for a community-operated cluster of photovoltaic (PV) power plants in two sample locations, one in Germany and one in Japan. For the analysis, the newly developed instrument of MPI-MPE diagrams is used, which plot the maximum power import (MPI) and maximum power export (MPE) in relation to the reference case of no local generation. Results reveal that for moderately sized PV systems without battery storage, avoided transmission can be seen in the Japanese model location, but not in Germany. It was also found that an additional battery storage can lead to avoided transmission in both locations, even for large sizes of installed PV capacity.
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