Effect of storage characteristics on wind intermittency mitigation effectiveness

Abstract

Stochastic variations and unpredictability of wind energy are the major concerns of power industry and hinder the wide scale adoption of wind power. Compensation of short term variability is one of the major challenges that the industry will face in the coming years. We analyze the potential impact of advanced control and storage technologies in reducing the intermittency of wind power. Using the convex optimization techniques we study the theoretical limits on the performance of storage technologies. Specifically we analyze the interplay between the variations of electric power fluctuations and the technical characteristics of storage available in the system. We quantify the trade-off between the reduction in power intermittency, storage capacity, power rating, and overall system efficiency.