Framework design of a hybrid energy system by combining wind farm with small gas turbine power plants

Owing to the stochastic characteristic of natural wind speed, the output fluctuation of wind farm has a negative impact on power grid when a large-scale wind farm is connected to a power grid. It is very difficult to overcome this impact only by wind farm itself. A novel power system called wind-gas turbine hybrid energy system was discussed, and the framework design of this hybrid energy system was presented in detail in this paper. The hybrid energy system combines wind farm with several small gas turbine power plants to form an integrated power station to provide a relatively firm output power. The small gas turbine power plant has such special advantages as fast start-up, shutdown, and quick load regulation to fit the requirement of the hybrid energy system. Therefore, the hybrid energy system uses the output from the small gas turbine power plants to compensate for the output fluctuation from the wind farm for the firm output from the whole power system. To put this hybrid energy system into practice, the framework must be designed first. The capacity of the wind farm is chosen according to the capacity and units of small gas turbine power plants, load requirement from power grid, and local wind energy resource distribution. Finally, a framework design case of hybrid energy system was suggested according to typical wind energy resource in Xinjiang Autonomous Region in China.