Feasibility of establishing solar photovoltaic power plants at existing wind farms

In wind farms, there are various configurations for micrositing the wind turbines. The goals of these configurations are to reduce wake effect losses and enhance the performance of wind turbines. The vacant land between the turbines has enormous potential for solar energy generation using photovoltaic modules. In this paper, a wind farm of 25 MW at Soda site in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan state in India is chosen and is analyzed for the possibility of establishing solar photovoltaic power plant by considering the location of wind turbines according to four configurations of 3D×5D, 3D×10D, 4D×8D, and 5D×7D (D is rotor diameter). The wind energy potential is calculated by using RETScreen Expert software. The solar energy potential of wind farm is calculated by using PVsyst software for four configurations of the wind farm. Six cases are considered for covering the vacant land in wind farm by assuming that 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, and 30% of wind farm area is covered by photovoltaic modules. The results show that the contribution of solar photovoltaic power plant generated energy in the combined wind and solar system is greater than 50% for most of the cases. The share of solar energy of total electricity produced in the solar-wind farm is maximum at 82.1% for 5D×7D configuration of wind farm layout and utilizing 30% of farm area for solar power production. The performance ratio of solar photovoltaic power plant varies in the range from 75% to 79% for different cases.