Hybridization of wind farms with co-located PV and storage installations

This paper evaluates the concept of hybridizing an existing wind farm (WF) by co-locating a photovoltaic (PV) park, with or without embedded battery energy storage systems (BESS), leveraging the WF's existing grid connection infrastructure on the grounds of resource complementarity. The feasibility and economic benefits of hybridization are established by comparing the levelized cost of energy of co-located and independently installed assets. A wide range of PV-to-wind capacity ratios and BESS power and energy capacities are investigated, modelling the operation of hybrid and independent configurations over their lifetime. To address the integration of BESS, a mixed-integer linear programming optimization algorithm is employed with an hourly timestep and over-diurnal horizon, adopting a price-taker approach against externally defined wholesale market price timeseries. The main finding is that hybridization noticeably improves the utilization of existing grid infrastructure, constituting an economically advantageous option for a range of PV-to-wind capacity ratios up to 82.5 % in the case of plain PVs or up to 90–140 % for BESS-equipped PVs, depending on the duration of integrated storage. When renewable curtailments due to system-level supply-demand equilibrium limitations are also considered, the analysis showcases that hybrid configurations remain competitive while, interestingly, the preferred range of PV capacities is further extended.