Comparison of Capacity Credit Calculation Methods for Conventional Power Plants and Wind Power

Several methods for computing capacity credit values of power plants have been presented over the years. This paper uses an empirical approach to investigate and compare different properties of four typical capacity credit definitions. It is shown that the choice of definition indeed can have a significant impact on the results. Concerning three of the analyzed methods, it is found that important factors that influence the capacity credit are the overall generation adequacy and the penetration factor of the power plant; this means that the same generating unit will generally have a higher capacity credit if added to a system with high loss of load probability, and the unit will have a higher capacity credit if its installed capacity is small compared to the total installed capacity of the system. The results of the fourth method only depend on the size and availability of the generating units.