Novel wind resource assessment and demand flexibility analysis for community resilience: A remote microgrid case study

Chong Her, Daniel J. Sambor, Erin Whitney and Richard Wies

Renewable Energy, 2021, vol. 179, issue C, 1472-1486

Abstract: With the increasing effects of climate change and high costs of energy, many rural Alaska communities are working to implement local alternative energy solutions to improve energy security. Integrating renewable energy systems can reduce reliance on fossil fuels and subsequently improve food, energy, and water (FEW) security. In this study, wind energy modeling techniques using local airport meteorological data were convolved with community loads to determine the most cost-effective combinations of wind turbine technology and dispatchable loads for improving FEW security in a southwestern Alaska village. This approach is different from wind assessments that exclusively analyze wind resources. A 100 kW wind turbine was determined to be suitable for the community, resulting in a capacity factor of 16.7% and levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of $1.15/kWh, with diminishing returns for higher wind turbine capacity. The results from the dispatchability study indicated that dispatchable loads could handle the intermittency of the wind resource with up to 86% of their annual load met. More work is needed to understand the impact of integrating and scheduling dispatchable loads into the grid in practice.

Keywords: Wind assessment; Microgrid; Arctic region; Dispatchable loads; Food-energy-water systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148121011046
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:179:y:2021:i:c:p:1472-1486

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2021.07.099

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().