Fimmtudaginn 4. júní kl. 15:00 mun Ólafur Þórsson verja 30 ECTS verkefni sitt til meistaragráðu í hátækniverkfræði „Integration and operation of distributed wind farms to enhance energy reliability in Iceland"

• Stofa: M208 og eru öll velkomin.
• Nemandi: Ólafur Þórsson
• Leiðbeinandi:  Guðmundur Kristjánsson
• Prófdómari: Eymundur Sigurðsson

Útdráttur:

Wind power has the potential to be a power source in Iceland which would bring a set
of challenges and opportunities. Wind power´s greatest challenge is it´s intermittency and
variability. To explore possible mitigation strategies, this project was carried out to find
the effect of geographical separation of wind power plants in Iceland on power production
reliability. This is done by answering two research questions.
First, how do geographically separated wind power plants operate together? If there is
low production at one wind power plant is there high production at the other and are the
power production fluctuations reduced? The second question evaluates the operational
challenges and opportunities that arise from integrating geographically distributed wind
power into a power system, including impacts on backup requirements, production stabil-
ity, and the usability of overproduction. The following methods are used in the project: A
simulation is made using WindPRO of three wind power plants in different regions of Ice-
land and run using weather data from 2010-2024. Then the production data is processed
using Python, to analyze the production patterns for the individual wind power plants and
combined, distributed systems of two or more wind power plants.
For the analysis of combined, distributed operation, the results were mostly positive,
showing increased stability, improved operability, and higher load coverage for distributed
wind power plants compared with individual wind power plants. Distributed systems re-
duced total backup energy requirements in MWh and lowered the required backup capac-
ity in MW. However, the backup results also showed a trade-off: backup events generally
became smaller and fewer, but the backup active time share and average backup event
duration increased in some cases. Therefore, distributed wind power can reduce the size
of backup requirements, while still requiring backup systems capable of operating over
longer periods. The results for overproduction usability were varied. Distributed wind
power plants were able to use BESS more effectively to reduce backup power usage, but
total battery usage remained low. Individual wind power plants had more fluctuating pro-
duction and therefore higher overproduction, which could be more available for variable
loads such as Power-to-X. The project concludes that distributed wind power plants have
production patterns which is more like stable power plants and decrease the effects of wind
powers biggest challenge which is the variability and uncontrollability.
Keywords: Wind power, Power reliability, Power diversification, BESS, Power-to-X