Study of a Hybrid Wind-Diesel System with Compressed Air Energy Storage

The electricity supply in remote areas around the world uses mostly diesel generators. This method, relatively inefficient and expensive, is responsible for the emission of 1.2 million tons of greenhouse gas (GHG) annually, only in Canada. Some low and high penetration wind-diesel hybrid systems (WDS) have been experimented in order to reduce the diesel consumption. The use of a high penetration system together with compressed air energy storage (CAES) it is a viable alternative to improve the overall percentage of renewable energy and reduce the cost of electricity. In this paper we compare different technical solutions for the CAES system and choose the one that optimize the performance and the cost of the overall system. While in this extended abstract only a superficial description of this system is introduced, detailed results of the simulation will be presented in the complete paper. This new design conducts to the increase of diesel power and efficiency, to the reduction of fuel consumption and GHG emissions, in addition to economies on the maintenance and replacement cost of the diesels.