Abstract
Environmental degradation is a rapidly growing
concern across the globe, which is primarily caused by
conventional fossil fuels-based power generation. This study
examines the feasibility of generating electricity by using
renewable energy sources (RESs) based hybrid power system
(HPS). A general planning framework for integrating solar
and wind energies in a HPS is proposed, that exploits the solar-
wind complementarity to stabilize the combined power output.
Specifically, it evaluates the solar-wind complementarity by
using Pearson’s correlation coefficient, and determines the
optimal shares of solar-wind energies in power generation by
minimizing the standard deviation of HPS power output. The
proposed framework is evaluated on a case study in Pakistan,
where sufficient solar-wind synergy potential exists. Our
results show that values of solar- wind complementarity varies
considerably from -0.351 (high complementarity) to 0.411 (low
complementarity). It is observed that by using optimized
shares, HPS power outputs exhibit less variations than the
outputs generated by standalone solar or wind energy-based
power systems. Best location for deployment of solar-wind
HPS is identified as the one that maximizes the solar-wind
complementarity benefits.