A comparative study of the storage assisted wind power conversion systems

This paper reviews three types of storage assisted wind power conversion systems (WPCS) that harvest the entirety of their wind power with assistance from an added compressed air or hydraulic subsystem. Configurations of a compressed-air assisted wind power conversion system (CA-WPCS) and a hydraulic wind power conversion system (H-WPCS) are explained and compared. The results of a numerical simulation show that these enhanced systems increase the power production compared to a benchmark wind turbine without storage. In addition, the results show that the CA-WPCS has the largest increase because the pneumatic subsystem in CA-WPCS is in parallel with the generator while the hydraulic power train in H-WPCS is in tandem with the generator. Having the subsystem in parallel allows some power generation to be done without using the subsystem and thus saves on the conversion loss.