LAUSR

Abstract This paper presents a new hybrid system to reduce wind curtailment and improve scheduling flexibility. This hybrid system includes a wind farm, a concentrated solar power plant with thermal energy storage, and an electric heater. The major role of the electric heater is to convert the redundant wind power into thermal energy, and the thermal energy is stored in the thermal energy storage of the concentrated solar power plant. The optimal scheduling of this hybrid system is formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming problem to maximize the profit subjected to technical constraints. The effects of the electric heater on the system are studied under different weather conditions. The test results show that the electric heater is helpful for reduction of the both deviation from generation plan and wind curtailment. The maximum relative deviation falls from 5.15% to 0% during the clear sky day, and 47.49% to 31.74% during the partial cloudy day. The wind curtailment rate decreases by 52.59% and 100% for clear and partial cloudy days, respectively. An annual simulation for the system shows that the overall daily cumulative deviations of the new system are significantly decreased, and the wind curtailment can be reduced by greater than 90% for 151 days, validating the effectiveness of the proposed system.