Demand and supply analysis of community type wind power system at Gurugoda Village in Sri Lanka

Though expansion of the main grid is the principal vehicle for electrification, wind and solar home systems and community-level independent grids are frequently better suited to serve remote, rural communities in an economic and efficient manner. According to present statistics solar and wind home power systems are commonly used for off-grid electrification and solar home systems are much popular in the country. More recently a small wind power system was installed at Gurugoda Village in Northwest region of Sri Lanka. This system was installed to supply electricity for 13 houses. Focal point of this study is analyzing the wind power system with considering available wind resources and electric energy demand. This wind/battery system was analyzed by making energy balance calculations for each of the 8,760 hours in a year simulating the operation of the system. For each hour, the electric demand is compared with the energy that the system can supply, and the flows of energy from each components of the system are calculated. For systems that include batteries, for each hour the simulation process can decide how to charge or discharge the batteries. Time series wind resource data, power curve of wind turbine, battery efficiency, demand pattern and demand variation were considered for this simulation. According to the results of this study, from May to October there is a good wind potential and electric production of wind turbine is sufficient to fulfill the demand. However, there may be an electric supply shortage in February, April and November.