Renewable energy production over the iberian peninsula: Optimizing power plants location and energy reservoirs

Abstract

In this paper we present a methodology for obtaining a energy production system based on renewable energy able to generate the energy demand supported by hydroelectric pumped storage. This model is based on the minimization of the variance of the differences between energy demand and production. The minimization procedure uses the simulated annealing, and looks for the complementarity (spatial and temporal) of solar and wind resources. The minimized variance is controlled by the use of pumped-storage hydroelectricity. The renewable energy time series are obtained by using pseudo-real climatological series coming from a Regional Climate hindcast (10km spatial resolution, 1 hour temporal resolution) for the period 1959-2007 over the Iberian Peninsula. Once the optimal series are obtained, it is analysed the requirements that the hydro-electrical system must have. The exercise here presented gives an idea of the relationships between the renewable energy production, hydro-electrical power (pumping) and energy storage needed to guarantee the energy demand at long-term under the consideration of no loss of energy.