Taking into Consideration the Inclusion of Wind Generation in Hybrid Microgrids: A Methodology and a Case Study

Luis Arribas,Natalia Bitenc,Andreo Benech

doi:10.3390/en14144082

Abstract

During the last decades, there has been great interest in the research community with respect to PV-Wind systems but figures show that, in practice, only PV-Diesel Power Systems (PVDPS) are being implemented. There are some barriers for the inclusion of wind generation in hybrid microgrids and some of them are economic barriers while others are technical barriers. This paper is focused on some of the identified technical barriers and presents a methodology to facilitate the inclusion of wind generation system in the design process in an affordable manner. An example of the application of this methodology and its results is shown through a case study. The case study is an existing PVDPS where there is an interest to incorporate wind generation in order to cope with a foreseen increase in the demand.

Highlights

Supplying remote isolated installations with diesel generators into a Diesel Power System (DPS) has traditionally been one of the most common solutions for all sizes of systems, but mainly for low and medium power ones
The twenty first century brought a strong reduction in the generation costs for solar PV, which has opened the door to its presence in existing DPS and constitutes the solar PV Diesel Power Systems (PVDPS)
Actual trends transitioning to very high percentages of renewable energies (RE) at all levels of power systems induces the need of the Renewable Energy Diesel Power Systems (REDPS), where wind and solar PV technologies might seem to be the most upfront ones and where the presence of medium and long term storage is common in order to reduce the use of fuel consumption

Summary

Introduction

Supplying remote isolated installations with diesel generators into a Diesel Power System (DPS) has traditionally been one of the most common solutions for all sizes of systems, but mainly for low (kWs range) and medium (up to MWs) power ones. With the development of renewable energies, their incorporation into the existing diesel grids started with wind energy due to its lower generation cost in comparison with solar PV, constituting the so called Wind Diesel Power Systems (WDPS) [1]. The twenty first century brought a strong reduction in the generation costs for solar PV, which has opened the door to its presence in existing DPS and constitutes the solar PV Diesel Power Systems (PVDPS). Actual trends transitioning to very high percentages of renewable energies (RE) at all levels of power systems induces the need of the Renewable Energy Diesel Power Systems (REDPS), where wind and solar PV technologies might seem to be the most upfront ones and where the presence of medium and long term (usually electrochemical) storage is common in order to reduce the use of fuel consumption. Over the past twenty-five years, hundreds of articles have addressed the topic of hybrid systems considering different configurations and final uses (a good representation of these papers can be found in the impressive literature review of photovoltaic-wind hybrid renewable system research by considering the most relevant 550 articles [2]) and, over the past decades, many reviews have made a comprehensive summary of various results obtained, which include, for example, the impressive review on more than 150 recent articles (including review and research articles) on sizing methodologies of hybrid renewable energy systems [3]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion