Case study of a large-scale solar and wind power hybrid system at Fakken Wind Farm, Troms

Abstract

The objective of this thesis is to investigate the feasibility of a large scale hybrid system at Fakken, Troms. There is already an existing 54 MW wind farm at site. The wind farm has considerably higher power production during winter compared to summer, and the electricity grid is therefore not fully exploited during summer. Adding a solar panel utility to the site could be a solution to this issue. This thesis is centralized around simulating the hybrid system using \textit{HOMER Pro}. This tool requires a whole year of data to perform a simulation. Since only three months of observed radiation are available, will WRF simulated solar radiation data be used in the HOMER simulations. To evaluate the feasibility of such a system is an anti correlation analysis between the solar and wind resources at site conducted. A negative correlation would be optimal. The anti correlation analysis is performed on observed wind and solar radiation for February, March and April 2017. A similar analysis is conduced on simulated solar radiation data and measured wind data for a whole year as well. The analysis do not show any anti correlation on small to middle time scales. Only on a very large time scale is the anti correlation significantly high.

The WRF model fails in producing a reliable solar radiation source partly because it overestimates the radiation levels and also because it has an offset in the daily profile of the radiation. Measures are taken for scaling the radiation to obtain more reliable results, but the offset is not corrected for.

A 20 MW solar power system is simulated together with the pre-existing wind far, with a grid constraint of 54 MW. Sensitivity analysis are performed on several physical, technical and economic parameters that might affect the feasibility of the system. Under the most realistic conditions simulated, did the system not qualify as an economic feasible system. There is possible to extract large amounts of power from the system if the right measures are taken, but it was not enough for the system to become profitable.