On the significance of hydro storage in leveraging wind integration in thermal systems

The short-term impact of diversifying a thermally dominant generation mix with varying degrees of renewable resources, notably wind and hydro, is assessed in this paper. This assessment accounts for the main technical and/or physical limitations to such diversification, namely, ramp and reserve requirements and hydro energy limits, and determines the most economic levels of wind integration and installed hydro capacity for a representative power system. The performance indices used in this assessment as a function of wind penetration are the average daily cost, the degree of wind curtailment, the percent contribution of costly peaking units and the amount of hydro energy usage.