Base load power plant

About: Base load power plant is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 6121 publications have been published within this topic receiving 96788 citations.

Output Power Correlation Between Adjacent Wind Power Plants

Abstract: The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) started a project in 2000 to record long-term, high-frequency (1-Hz) wind power data from large commercial wind power plants in the Midwestern United States. Outputs from about 330 MW of installed wind generating capacity from wind power plants in Lake Benton, MN, and Storm Lake, Iowa, are being recorded. Analysis of the collected data shows that although very short-term wind power fluctuations are stochastic, the persistent nature of wind and the large number of turbines in a wind power plant tend to limit the magnitude of fluctuations and rate of change in wind power production. Analyses of power data confirms that spatial separation of turbines greatly reduces variations in their combined wind power output when compared to the output of a single wind power plant. Data show that high-frequency variations of wind power from two wind power plants 200 km apart are independent of each other, but low-frequency power changes can be highly correlated. This fact suggests that time-synchronized power data and meteorological data can aid in the development of statistical models for wind power forecasting.

Levelized cost of solar photovoltaics and wind supported by storage technologies to supply firm electricity

Abstract: Energy storage technologies can assist intermittent solar and wind power to supply firm electricity by forming flexible hybrid systems. However, evaluating these hybrid systems has proved to be a major challenge, since their techno-economic performance depends on a large number of parameters, including the renewable energy generation profile, operational parameters of storage technologies and their associated costs. In this study, we develop a method to simulate the performance and determine the levelized cost of hybrid systems to provide firm electricity supply under various supply strategies such as peak demand and baseload at three different scales (representative sizes). The methodology is implemented for Switzerland, however, it can also be replicated for other geographies. Our results show that the optimal choice for a hybrid system depends on the scale rather than the supply mode strategy. We find that solar photovoltaics in combination with lithium-ion battery at the residential (0.39 to 0.77 EUR/kWh) and utility scale (0.17 to 0.36 EUR/kWh) as well as with pumped hydro storage at the bulk scale (0.13 to 0.18 EUR/kWh) offer the lowest levelized costs. Reducing the cost of both renewable and storage technologies as well as the storage size by allowing some level of curtailment or distortion in the firm supply profile improves the cost-competitiveness of hybrid systems.

Use of Adaptive Thermal Storage System as Smart Load for Voltage Control and Demand Response

Abstract: This paper describes how a large-scale ice-thermal storage can be turned into a smart load for fast voltage control and demand-side management in power systems with intermittent renewable power, while maintaining its existing function of load shaving. The possibility of modifying a conventional thermal load has been practically demonstrated in a refrigerator using power electronics technology. With the help of an electric spring, the modified thermal load can reduce power imbalance in buildings while providing active and reactive power compensation for the power grid. Based on practical data, a building energy model incorporating a large-scale ice-thermal storage system has been successfully used to demonstrate the advantageous demand-response features using computer simulation of both grid connected and isolated power systems. The results indicate the potential of using ice-thermal storage in tall buildings in reducing voltage and frequency fluctuations in weak power grids.