Large scale wind power integration challenges

In the scenario of energy and environmental crises that we are facing today, integrating renewable sources of energy with the existing power grids is rapidly becoming the most obvious solution. Harnessing electricity from wind is a promising option that has lately attracted attention and research funding worldwide. However, increasing wind power penetration still remains a daunting problem starting from harvesting the energy to the delivery to consumers. At present in the US, wind power contributes only about 2% of the total electric power supply. To achieve 20% wind penetration into electric grids by 2030, a goal suggested and supported by the Department of Energy (DOE), the problems of large scale wind integration must be addressed in multiple stages starting from wind farm design at the planning stage to tackling the variability of the wind power at the operational stage. The first part of the talk will be focused on the optimal design of a wind farm collector system, which is the single most important element of a wind farm after the wind turbines. Typical collector system designs are generated manually which is cumbersome and inefficient. This work will show how a graph theoretic approach can be used to automate the design process while generating optimal designs under certain constraints. Another critical challenge with the operation of wind farms is addressing output power variability due to wind variation. Reliable power supply requires integration of energy storage units with wind farms. Methodologies will be presented for optimal sizing of storage units as well as computing charge-discharge schedule for uninterrupted power supply. ————————————— —————————————