The Revenue page provides inputs to define the sources of revenue for the merchant plant. A merchant plant can earn revenue for energy and ancillary services and from capacity payments. For energy and ancillary service revenue, the project only earns revenue from the cleared capacity portion of generation for each source of revenue. SAM calculates reports the annual revenue for each type of service in the project cash flow.

For energy and ancillary services, you can specify cleared capacity and price values for the following time scales over the entire analysis period:

•Single Value: The same cleared capacity (MW) and price ($/MWh) applies over the entire analysis period.

•Monthly: Cleared capacity and price values change from month to month.

•Daily: Values change from day to day.

•Hourly: Values change hourly.

•Subhourly: As long as you use a weather file with the same time step as the pricing time scale, values apply to each simulation time step (30, 20, 15, 10, 5, or 1-minute time steps are allowed).

Notes.
 
If the power generation (kW) in a given time step is less than the cleared capacity (MW) for energy and ancillary services in that time step, SAM generates a simulation error because this condition would be a violation of the merchant contract.
 
The merchant plant does not earn any revenue if the cleared capacity is zero for all time steps.

Annual revenue from capacity payments can be calculated as a fixed price or a price per unit of eligible capacity with an optional annual capacity payment escalation rate.

Capacity Payments

Capacity payments are is an annual payment to the project for available capacity. SAM reports the annual capacity payment revenue in the project cash flow.

Note. If your project does not involve capacity payments, set Capacity payment amount to zero.

Capacity basis

Specify the annual capacity payment as a dollar per megawatt value with the capacity credit specified as a percentage of the system nameplate capacity. See the system nameplate description below.

Fixed amount

Specify the annual capacity payment as a dollar amount.

Capacity payment amount, $/MW or $/year

When you choose the capacity basis option, enter a $/MW value in Year 1 dollars for the annual capacity payment.

Note. SAM assumes the capacity payment rate in $/MW is an annual rate. If you are given a daily or monthly rate, you should convert it to an annual rate. For example, a $100/MW daily rate would be equivalent to $36,500/MW annually. Similarly, a $100/MW monthly rate would be $1,200/MW annually.

When you choose the fixed amount, enter a $ value in Year 1 dollars for the annual capacity payment.

You can also click and then Edit to use the Edit Schedule window to enter a different payment amount for each year of the analysis period instead of a single value.

Capacity payment escalation

The annual escalation rate applies to the annual capacity payment in Years 2 and later. If you expect the capacity payment amount to increase from year to year, enter the escalation rate as an annual percentage.

The capacity payment escalation rate is disabled when you choose the Schedule option to enter annual values for the capacity payment amount.

Capacity credit (eligible % of nameplate), %

The percentage of the system's nameplate capacity that is eligible for capacity payments when you choose the Capacity basis option. If this value is zero, no capacity payments will be made.

For systems with battery storage that earn a capacity payment based on the battery's capacity in kW (maximum discharge power), you can use the capacity credit percentage to represent the battery capacity. For example, for a PV-battery system with a 100 MW array and 60 MWac battery, you could set the capacity credit percentage to 60.

System nameplate, MW

The system's nameplate capacity. Note that the nameplate capacity is defined differently for different kinds of systems. For example for photovoltaic systems, the nameplate capacity is the total DC array capacity, and for wind and concentrating solar power systems, it is an AC capacity.

Battery maximum discharge power, MWac

For systems with battery storage, the battery's maximum discharge power from the Battery Cell and System page.

For PV Battery and Custom Generation Profile - Battery configurations, SAM shows this battery capacity value for reference, but does not use it to calculate the capacity payment amount.

For Standalone Battery configurations, SAM uses the battery maximum discharge power to calculate the capacity payment amount.

NREL Cambium Hourly Price Data Download

If you do not have time series price data for your analysis, you can download hourly marginal cost data for modeled futures of the U.S. electricity sector from the NREL Cambium database.

To download Cambium price data:

1.Click the Energy Market or Ancillary Service tab at the bottom of the Revenue page for the market you want to assign the downloaded price data.

2.Choose the option you want to use for price data: Time series cleared capacity and price or Fixed cleared capacity and time series price. (See below for descriptions.)

3.Choose values for the Cambium API parameters as appropriate. Click the button to read a description of each parameter, or see the Cambium documentation for more details.

4.If you choose the Multiple years option for the Year parameter, choose the start year.

5.Specify the optional Annual price escalation rate if you want SAM to apply an escalation rate to the Cambium price data. SAM does not automatically apply the inflation rate from the Financial Parameters page when it downloads the Cambium data, so you can use this escalation rate to represent inflation or any other price increase.

Cambium price data is in real terms for a constant dollar year for the year preceding the release. For example, for Cambium 2022, prices are in 2021 dollars.

6.Click the Download to [...] button. SAM downloads the price data to the energy market or ancillary service price option you chose in Step 2.

7.Click Edit lifetime data to verify that the price data downloaded correctly.

Notes about the Multiple Year option.
 
The Multiple Years option downloads 8760 hourly values for more than one year, which may take a few minutes to complete.
 
Only some years are available from the Cambium database. For example, Cambium 2023 data is available for 2025, 2030, 2035, 2040, 2045, and 2050. If you set the start date to 2030 for a project with a 25-year analysis period, SAM downloads cambium data for the available years between 2030 and 2050. For missing years, it copies data from the previous available year, so it would use 2030 data for 2031, 2032, 2033, and 2034.
 
If you specify an escalation rate, SAM treats the start year as Year 0, and uses the escalation rate to adjust the values for later years. It does not apply the inflation rate from the Financial Parameters page to the downloaded price data.

Energy Market and Ancillary Service

Energy market and ancillary service revenue is revenue for the cleared capacity available in each time step at the specified price in $/MWh.

The cleared capacity is the portion of the generated capacity in a given time step that is compensated at the energy price. See "Example Compensation Scenarios" above for examples.

SAM allows the project to earn revenue from any combination of energy market and up to four ancillary services. Click the tab for each market to enable it and specify prices and cleared capacity.

Note. When you enable one or more ancillary services, SAM assumes that the system is capable of providing the type of service represented by each ancillary service. It does not model reactive power, frequency, spinning reserves or startup capabilities that would be required to provide these services in an actual system.

Enable energy market revenue

Check the box to enable energy market revenue.

Time series cleared capacity and price

Choose this option when you have time series data for both the cleared capacity in MW and price in $/MWh.

Click Edit lifetime data for Energy market cleared capacity and price to specify time series data.

Fixed cleared capacity and time series price

Choose this option when you have time series data for price in $/MWh and want SAM to calculate the cleared capacity as a percentage of generated power in each time step.

Click Edit lifetime data for Energy market price for fixed cleared capacity to specify time series price data.

For Energy market fixed cleared capacity, enter the cleared capacity as a percentage of generation in each time step.