Harnessing Solar Energy from Wind Farms: Case Study of Four Wind Farms

Abstract

In the renewable energy sector, power generation from solar photovoltaic and wind turbine systems are the most popular. The electricity production has to be increased day-by-day for meeting the ever-increasing demand for electricity. Large-scale wind and solar photovoltaic power plants require a large size of land. In the combined system, both solar photovoltaic modules and wind turbines are installed at the same site. It thus reduces the cost of separate land and transmission lines. In this regard, the paper presents power performance improvement by the integration of a wind power plant with a solar PV power plant in the available installation area. The wind power plants at four sites namely Pratapgarh in Rajasthan (45 MW), Davangere in Karnataka (29.70 MW), Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu (33 MW), and Anantpur in Andhra Pradesh (50.40 MW) are considered for study and analysis. These sites are having enormous solar photovoltaic and wind energy potential. Wind farm array is considered of 5D × 7D configuration and the possibility of installing solar photovoltaic power plant is analyzed. The electricity generated by solar photovoltaic systems at wind farms sites is estimated by using PVsyst software. Six cases of wind farm area such as 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, and 30% are taken into consideration for the installation of solar photovoltaic power plants. The annual average performance ratio and annual average capacity utilization factor of solar photovoltaic power plants are varying from 77%–79% to 18%–20%, respectively, for the four locations. The annual solar electricity generation is estimated the highest at Pratapgarh (Rajasthan) and annual wind electricity generation is estimated highest at Davangere (Karnataka). The combined annual electricity generation is estimated highest at Davangere (Karnataka) and is followed by Tirunelveli (Tamil Nadu), Anantpur (Andhra Pradesh), and Pratapgarh (Rajasthan).