RENEWABLE ENERGY FORECASTING BASED HYDROPOWER SCHEDULING

Abstract

The depleting fossil-fuel sources and the alarming impacts of climate change has globally led to a major transition from fossil-fuel based energy mix to non-fossil fuel based energy options. The energy produced from the non-fossil energy sources such as solar, wind, biomass, geothermal etc. are not only environmentally benign but is also turning out to be cost-effective due to the advancement in the technology as well as higher deployment. All over the world, the governments have formulated the policies and declared their intended national determination for the non-fossil fuel-based sources development. Some countries have even targeted their 100 % electricity from renewable energy sources in the near future including India, where complete energy decarbonization is targeted by the year 2070. The renewable energy sources with the maximum potential and development globally are solar, wind, geothermal and hydro energy sources. The hydropower is one of the proven and reliable technology but the number of large hydropower installations have reached almost a stagnation point due to the various environmental and social concerns. On the other hand, wind and solar technology have gone through the major transitional phase from being only at small scale decentralized level to the large-scale installation at the grid scale during past two decades and have become competitive in the energy market. Despite of the numerous advantages possessed by wind and solar power, the inherited drawback of intermittency and variability have become even more profound with the large scale solar and wind deployments at the grid level. This sometime results into the grid instability and crashing of the energy markets. To limit this, balancing and cushioning is required at the grid level to absorb such intermittency and variability of solar and wind power. The energy storage technologies are being deployed for this purpose where except pumped hydro storage most of them are yet to be cost effective for high-capacity storage. The pumped hydro storage system is the most mature and high-capacity energy storage system at the utility level being deployed globally. The development of new pumped storage plant today is a challenging task due to the creation of two reservoirs, which may cause environmental, rehabilitation, and submergence related issues, if constructed newly.