Cost Performance Tradeoff Study of Power Generation From Wind

Health and environmental consequences of conventional fossil fuels are drawing more interest in expanding the use of renewable energy sources. The primary challenges in supplying the required electricity from wind are the variability, uncertainty, and the cost of electric power generation. An earlier paper presented the results of a system concept tradeoff using one-year wind/load data from Pennsylvania New Jersey Maryland Interconnection LLC (PJM). While one year results showed a wind plus natural gas system can reduce CO₂ emission as much as 50% below that of an all-natural gas system with only a modest increase in system cost, typical power generation modeling extends to three years. In this work, the developed model is employed to estimate the magnitude of cost versus performance using three-year wind/load data at PJM in the United States and EirGrid in Ireland, and cost estimations published by the Energy Information Agency. The year to year variation at each region is studied and compared with each other. Also, the curtailment curve obtained from three years wind/load data is compared with that from one year to access the variance. The grid-scale storage parameter variations are studied to estimate the generation cost with storage as a function of emission levels.