Abstract:
Modern wind energy is the technology of choice with a short payback period for increasing renewable energy portfolios. Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), a United States power authority in the Pacific Northwest expects to increase their wind energy capacity from 2,000 megawatts to 6,000 megawatts within the next five years. Currently BPA uses their vast hydroelectric resources to counteract the variability of wind energy, but the control of hydroelectric power is somewhat limited by water and fish conditions on the Columbia River. As the integration of wind energy continues to increase, the variability of wind energy on the power system must be addressed. Large scale energy storage systems such as pumped hydro, compressed air, and flow cell batteries are viable technologies to support high wind energy integration. This thesis presents a method for obtaining optimal energy capacity and power rating of an energy storage system for wind farm support.
