Wind-diesel hybrid system : energy storage system selection method

Canada is an immense country and while most of the population is concentrated near the US border, there is more than 300 000 peoples living in isolated communities that are not connected to the electrical grid [1]. In those remote places, electricity is produced using diesel generators at very high economic and environmental costs. Since most of these locations possess good wind conditions an obvious solution to reduce this burden is to couple a wind turbine with the diesel generator. However, in the absence of a storage system, the penetration factor must be kept low due to the constraints related to the operation of the diesel generator. This leads to a waste of the wind turbine electricity and significantly reduces the economic interest of the method. Penetration factor can be largely increased by the addition of an energy storage system. The utilization of the excess energy allows a much more stable power and the complete stop of the diesel generators when they are not needed and a close to optimal performance of it, which reduces their maintenance cost. Nevertheless, the optimization of the whole system is critical to reach an adequate level of performance. This paper describes this optimization process and the selected system concept