Combined Operation of Wind-Pumped Hydro Storage Plant with a Concentrating Solar Power Plant for Insular Systems: A Case Study for the Island of Rhodes

Abstract

Insular power systems are a special case of infrastructure for power production due to their particular land morphology with extensive hills and ridges. For a higher renewable energy share in the power production, a dedicated design according to local constraints is required. The high wind and solar resources of such cases can be utilized with offshore wind turbines and concentrating solar power, respectively. In addition, pumped-hydro storage is a mature and suitable technology for such terrain. A case study is presented in the island of Rhodes to obtain a renewable energy penetration higher than 70%. The technical and financial requirements for this implementation support the design of this system, while the introduction of concentrating solar power enables significant energy savings during the periods of peak demand of the island. An annual RES penetration close to 80% can be achieved with the combined operation of both plants. The economic viability of the required investment can be ensured with selling prices of the produced electricity in the range of 0.20EUR /kWh.

Optimizing the Installation of Hybrid Power Plants in Non-Interconnected Islands

“…Battery and hydrogen storage systems can be installed everywhere on the island, without depending on the particular morphology of the island. On the opposite, a PHS requires a favorable geographical location for the reservoir [2], [17], while a CAES prerequisites the availability of a deep underground cavern, e.g., salt dome, depleted natural gas cavern, aquifer, hard rock mines [25]. Specifically, for the island of Rhodes, authors in [17, section 3.3] pointed out a favorable location (most probably the only one), for hosting a seawater PHS, near the substation of Afantou (node 5).…”

“…• Scenario 1: The network accommodates additional renewable and storage power in the form of HPPs. Only one favorable location for PHS is assumed at node 5, with a maximum reservoir's capacity 5 GWh [17] (namely 𝐸 5,𝑝,𝑚𝑎𝑥 = 5𝐺𝑊ℎ in ( 17)). No favorable location exists for CAES, and thus, the maximum capacity in ( 18) is set to zero, at all nodes.…”

“…In [16], a rule-based algorithm is proposed to optimize the battery capacity of an HPP, with the objective to compensate the power variations of RESs. In [17], the authors introduce a rule-based algorithm to minimize the total cost of the Greek island Rhodes, by optimizing the size of a HPP consisting of wind, PHS, and concentrating solar plant. In [2], a rule-based algorithm is proposed to optimize the size of three HPPs for three Greek islands.…”

“…In [2], a rule-based algorithm is proposed to optimize the size of three HPPs for three Greek islands. However, heuristic and rule-based algorithms, e.g., [2], [12]- [17], are characterized by suboptimal solutions, i.e., they cannot ensure the global optimality, and increased computational complexity due to the several iterations needed to converge. Moreover, rule-based algorithms are not applicable in case of multiple HPPs with many internal components, due to the extremely large number of scenarios that need to be computed.…”

Techno-Economics and the Identification of Environmental Barriers to the Development of Concentrated Solar Thermal Power Plants in India

“…The results of that study suggest that the wet-cooled condenser shows better performance compared to the air-cooled condenser. Arnaoutakis et al [35] combined the Wind-Pumped Hydro Storage Plant and the CSP power plants to assess their effectiveness on the Island of Rhodes. The results from their study suggest that renewable energy source penetration of about 80% can be achieved annually using the combination of both plants.…”