Apr 7 2010
With the legislation being passed in the EU member countries that require 20% of the electricity requirements to be met from renewable sources of energy by 2020 and more especially from wind farms, researchers have successfully interconnected large-sized wind farms in groups.
Wind energy plays a key part in the renewable energy sector. Statistics from the German Wind Energy Association indicate that the year 2009 saw 952 novel facilities being installed in Germany. The German Renewable Energy Federation forecasts that 47% of overall electrical energy utilization in 2020 – an estimated 595 terawatt hours – is likely to be generated from renewable sources of energy, with 25% to be contributed by wind energy.
A team of European research organizations and industrial companies have joined hands to investigate the possibility of safely integrating wind farms located on the Iberian Peninsula with the European electricity grid. The Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology IWES, in an effort to help grid operators with the control, capture and forecast of wind energy, has provided its Wind Power Management System and Wind Farm Cluster Management System (WCMS). The researchers utilized these software for integrating six wind farms in Spain with 107 MW total capacity and five wind farms located in Portugal with 204 MW capacity in the power grid. The WCMS was used to connect the wind farms located at different locations into a single cluster.
The Department Head of IWES’ Kassel branch Kurt Rohrig opined that while the WCMS ensures safe operation by keeping the electricity’s voltage and frequency constant, the Wind Power Management System forecasting software utilizes artificial neural networks for calculating expected wind energy based on predicted weather patterns.
Rohrig hopes that the electricity price generated by means of wind energy can cost about 4 cents per kilowatt hour by 2025 and also believes that conventional power plants will be replaced by wind farms in the future.