Integration of renewable sources in the electric system using Virtual Renewable Power Plants

Abstract

The concept of “Virtual Renewable Power Plants - VRPP” enables several positive factors for the electric integration of Renewable Energy Sources (RES), namely (a) the smoothing of time based fluctuation of the power delivered by the RES, (b) the use of the natural complementary of renewable resources availability (c) the establishment of synergies between different RES as well as the combination of their production. The present work aims to identify the synergies between wind and photovoltaic (PV) plants, regarding their daily profiles l complementarity and resource availability; as well as the technical and economic added value of a VRPP. Results show an increase of 5.3% in the capacity factor when 2 MWp of PV is added to an 8 MW wind farm, considering all infrastructural capacity limits. Moreover, additional results include the characterization and optimization of hybrid virtual wind-PV plants production profile.