Design and Performance Analysis of Utility Scale-Grid connected Hybrid Wind-Solar Plant in an Existing Operational Wind Farm in India

Renewable Energy (RE) is a clean and green energy available worldwide. India is harvesting green energy technologies in an exponential way with solar irradiation and wind resources available. In the existing wind farms, there is a scope for generation of solar energy using photovoltaic modules in the vacant lands which are available between the wind turbines. Considering techno-commercial, land acquisition issues and right of way, the establishment of solar plants in the existing wind farms would also be a better choice. Hence, it is proposed to establish a solar power plant of 25 MW capacity in an existing wind farm of 75 MW capacity located in Coimbatore district, Tamilnadu, India by considering the wind farm layout and i) utilizing the existing step-up distribution transformers ii) by adding separate step-up transformers and iii) as a dedicated co-located solar power plant. The existing wind farm is operational, and it is decided to integrate the proposed solar power plant. The wind farm and solar power plant will be interconnected with the power grid through point of common coupling to inject the power to the grid. The solar power generation simulation has been carried out using PVsyst software. The modeling, simulation and performance evaluation of a utility scale grid-connected hybrid wind-solar power was done using ETAP software. In this paper, various possibilities for integrating solar power plants in existing wind farms have been explored, and the design of appropriate power extraction and protection schemes for the hybrid wind-solar plant has been analyzed and recommended.