Abstract
Wind turbines hit by hurricanes produce high variability of power generation profile. This research proposes a method to estimate this variability and solutions to smooth it. The method calculates the hurricane wind-speed profile in each turbine by Holland's parametric equation in spatiotemporal steps of the hurricane trajectory. The calculated wind speed profile is converted into a power generation profile using wind turbine characteristic curves. Since the simulations show high variability of power profile, this research investigates two strategies to smooth such variability. The first one is systemic. A U.S.-Caribbean super grid interconnecting the Caribbean islands with the U.S. power grid by submarine high voltage direct current (HVDC) cables is proposed. This super grid shows technical feasibility since the proposed route of cables meets some installation criteria, such as a maximum water depth of 3 km and cable length not exceeding 879 km. The U.S.-Caribbean super grid reduces power profile variability by draining the wind power peak caused by hurricanes passing through the Caribbeans and transmitting it to the US power grid by the Florida-Bahamas HVDC interconnector. Another strategy, with special turbines, was tested to evaluate a potential reduction in power variability. However, the special turbines with a high cutout speed showed a limited effect on reducing the variability compared to the U.S.-Caribbean super grid. The proposed power profile estimation method is an essential tool for planning, preliminary design, and reinforcements of high voltage grids in hurricane-prone regions with wind power capacity.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 113082 |
| Journal | Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews |
| Volume | 173 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 2023 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
Despite such opportunity for wealth distribution and humanitarian support, this research takes note of important data shown in Tables 10 and i.e., the installed power capacity of the selected Caribbean islands of 19.04 GW. From this 19.04 GW, 89% of power capacity driven by fossil fuel corresponds to 17 GW.The authors thank the Energy Production and Infrastructure Center (EPIC) of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and the Laboratory of Power System Protection and Automation of the University of São Paulo, for their support. The authors also thank the peer-reviewers of this journal for their valuable comments, which helped the authors to improve even more the quality of this paper.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Energy Production and Infrastructure Center, University of North Carolina at Charlotte | |
| Universidade de São Paulo |
Keywords
- Assessment
- Hurricanes
- Spatiotemporal
- Wind
- Wind energy
