Energy Storage for Wind Turbines
Energy Market
Impressive Engineering has requested an energy consultant company to perform a commercial assessment of a wind turbine with a built-in Hydraulic Storage (WT+HS). The selected consultant has many years of experience in the energy market specifically in wind energy industry.
The assessment shows that WT+HS will have higher Internal Rate of Return (IRR) compared to the conventional wind turbines based on the UK energy market. Considering the similarities in the world energy market it is expected that WT+HS will be a more profitable investment compared to the conventional wind turbines in the future energy market.
Time Shifting
WT+HS can store the irregular wind energy during the night when the demand is low and provides continues electricity from the stored energy when the demand is high. The low price energy produced at off-peak hours can be stored and used later at high price to meet high demand peak hours.
Annual production
Annual production of a wind turbine or wind farm with intrinsic Hydraulic Storage can be increased over a conventional wind turbine or wind farm without storage due to the possible capture of curtailment energy.
Power Quality and Ancillary Services
Power delivered by a Pelton wheel turbine with advanced control system and variable nozzle control is highly controlled and offers high power quality to the grid. Furthermore the aggregation of many such WT+HS provides many possibilities for grid services such as fast frequency control or operating reserve including Short Term Operating Reserve (STOR), Fast Reserve ancillary services, Black Start, Frequency Response, Reactive Power, etc.
Predictability
A conventional wind farm future output cannot be perfectly predicted due to the complexity and variability of wind. Therefore a conventional wind farm may be subject to imbalance charges quite often. These imbalance charges can add up to a large amount over the course of a year. A wind turbine or wind farm with its own intrinsic Hydraulic Storage will not be susceptible to such charges since the output would be almost certain and perfectly predictable.
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