A COMBINED PROBABILISTIC TIME-SERIES MODEL FOR WIND DIESEL SYSTEMS SIMULATION

This article describes a new simulation model for wind/diesel systems. It involves a combined time series and statistical approach to estima te the fuel use of diesel generators. In addition to provision for mod eling non-identical diesels, the model allows the inclusion of multipl e, non-identical wind turbines whose output may or may not be correlat ed. Three diesel dispatching strategies are provided. One assumes no s torage, and when storage is employed, either a peak shaving or cycle c harge control option can be used. The storage module uses a flexible b attery model specially designed for time series simulation codes. A ke y assumption for the main analytical model is that, within each time s tep, the load and wind power are assumed to be normally distributed. T he mean net load is the mean load less the mean wind power and its var iance is found from the variance of the load and the wind power. A los s of load probability is used to find the maximum and minimum anticipa ted values of the net load. In addition to summarizing the overall ana lytical model, this article presents the results of a number of simula tions demonstrating the performance prediction (diesel fuel usage) cap abilities of the model. For one of these cases (a no storage system), the results show excellent correlation between the model and actual da ta. Other cases summarized show that the use of the model greatly faci litates the integration of storage into the control scheme, and gives the fuel saving potential for several different wind/diesel system con figurations.