An alternative methodology to evaluate sites using climatology criteria for hosting wind, solar, and hybrid plants

Abstract

ABSTRACT Nowadays a suitable place selection for hosting alternative technologies in power plant installation has been a problem, such as wind and photovoltaic plants. Additionally, the hybrid plant inclusion from these two alternative energy sources is even more challenging for project planners who consider different criteria such as orographic, economic, geographic, and the most important climatological. This paper presents an alternative methodology to evaluate the available wind and solar energy resources in a site for determining if it is a candidate to host wind, solar, or hybrid power plants (wind and solar) with only climatological criteria using databases of automatic meteorological stations. To evaluate the available wind resource, the Weibull distribution was conducted according to on-site wind speed and the parameters are calculated using the modified maximum likelihood (MML) method. The available solar resource is analyzed in the peak hours of solar radiation at the site. The wind speed and peak solar time variables are addressed to a decision tree that determines if the site is suitable to host wind, solar, hybrid, or no power generation technologies according to the weather criteria. The methodology was performed in four sites with different weather according to Köppen–Geigen climate classification in Mexico and showed that two sites have potential to host hybrid plants with 80%; three sites with wind power plant at 100% and one site with solar power plant about 60% of power on-site resource available. Murcia, Spain, was considered to validate its application in any site, showing a similar performance, getting the potential to host wind, solar, and hybrid plants with 100%, 46%, and 70% of power on-site resources available, respectively. The results show that this methodology is the easiest and useful alternative to evaluate sites by using climatology criteria for hosting wind, solar, or hybrid power generation plants.