CONTINUOUS POWER GENERATION SYSTEM COMPRISING WIND POWER AND PV HYBRID WITH 100% RENEWABLE ENERGY STORAGE

Abstract

The share of renewable resources in energy systems around the world is constantly increasing. The paper examines how renewable energy technology capital costs influence the optimal configuration and energy costs of a solar power system consisting solely of renewables. The HOMER software has been adapted with hydropower and geothermal plants to include and simulate pumped storage. As a result of the available wind, solar and geothermal resources, Ometepe Island, Nicaragua has been chosen as a case study. More importantly, it has an extinguished volcano with a crater lake at its top which can be used as its upper pumped storehouse. When considering geothermal, the results indicate that this technology can serve the system's basic load, decrease the installed capacity required for other resources and lower storage demands and electricity production exceeding. Included is the geothermic option which increases the required size of solar and wind farming by up to 6.5 times the peak power, thereby increasing energy costs and excessive electricity production during the time of other variable resources. The various system configuration results have shown that the economic side of renewable energy production is at least as important as the availability of natural resources.