SCHEDULING OF WIND-PUMPED STORAGE HYDRO POWER PLANTS

Abstract

Wind energy is variable renewable energy source. To utilize this variable energy source in a electricity grid system, it is desirable to regulate this efficiently and store the excess wind energy when not required and delivers when needed. The pumped storage is a proven energy storage system which can be efficiently deployed in conjunction with variable wind energy source to match the power demand profile. In this study it has been attempted to use wind energy supported with pumped storage by solving optimization problem. In the pumped storage, two reservoirs at different elevations are used, where water is pumped from lower reservoir to upper reservoir at the time of excess wind energy and during the time of high demand water is released from upper reservoir to lower reservoir to generate hydro power energy. Pumped storage plant is added to electricity system to achieve high economic gain from wind energy system having variable and intermittent characteristics. A short term (hourly) optimization problem has been developed for optimum daily operational strategy. Such exercise is only possible if forecasting of wind energy is available. It has been shown that profits are achieved with wind-hydro system instead of only wind system with grid