Power dispatch assessment of a wind farm and a hydropower plant: A case study in Argentina

Abstract

This work aims to analyze the complementary operation between an existing hydropower plant and a projected wind farm in a remote area of Argentinean Patagonia. With this new generation, the grid element sizes will be insufficient to handle both generation sources at rated. Particulary, a bottleneck will be present at the transmission line and the coupling transformer with the main grid. To avoid this situation, a coordinated dispatch policy of both generation sources is proposed. With this aim, a heuristic algorithm is developed that improves energy generation under the transmission system restrictions. The proposal is assessed and compared with other operation policies on the basis of real data collected over nine years. The benefits of the proposal, that basically consists in reducing wind and hydro power spillage are highlighted. Furthermore, the impact of enlarging the wind farm on the overall power system production is also evaluated.