Contributions to the design of a water pumped storage system in an isolated power system with high penetration of wind energy

Abstract

The increasing penetration of renewable energies in the electrical systems, particularly in small and isolated systems, like the case studied in this paper, Terceira Island in Azores, Portugal, creates challenges in the dispatch related to the variability and the difficulty to forecast the renewable resources. One way to deal with such issues is to use Water Pumping Storage Systems (WPSS) to regulate the system electricity production by storing energy surplus in low load periods and returning it back in high load periods, reducing at the same time the need to curtail wind. This paper describes and compares a deterministic and a metaheuristic methodology, using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), used to determine the best configuration of the WPSS in terms of number and unit power of pumps and turbines, and upper and lower reservoir capacity that lead to the best economic value, determined by the Net Present Value (NPV) of the investment.