Effect of Hybrid Power Station Installation in the Operation of Insular Power Systems

摘要

Greece has a large number of islands that are isolated from the main interconnected Greek power system; however, a majority of them are to be interconnected in the mainland grid over the next decade. A large number of these islands present a significant amount of wind and solar potential. The nature of load demand and renewable production is stochastic; thus, the operation of such isolated power systems can be improved significantly by the installation of a large-scale energy storage system. The role of storage is to compensate for the long and short-term imbalances between power generation and load demand. Pumped hydro storage (PHS) systems represent one of the most mature technologies for large-scale energy storage. However, their advantages have not been proven in practice for cases of medium and small-sized isolated insular systems. Regarding Greece, which contains a large number of isolated insular systems, a PHS system in the island of Ikaria started its test operation in 2019, whereas in Europe only one PHS system operates in El Hierro (Canary Islands). This paper studies the effect of installing a wind-PHS hybrid power station in the operation of the insular power system of Samos, Greece, according to the latest regulatory framework. The implemented analysis uses real hourly data for a whole year, and examines the effects of such an installation considering investors’ and power system operators’ viewpoints. More specifically, the economic viability of this project under different billing scenarios is compared, and its impact on the insular power system operation for various PHS sizes is examined.