Wind Resources in Conjunction with Dispatchable Loads Explored for Alaska Microgrid

A new research paper by ACEP’s Chong Her, Erin Whitney, Rich Wiess and Stanford University’s Dan Sambor takes a new approach at looking at wind energy modeling techniques.

This research looked beyond the wind resource from the local airport meteorological data and included community load data to determine the most cost-effective combinations of wind turbine technology and dispatchable loads for improving food energy and water security in a southwestern Alaska village.

The results indicated that dispatchable loads could handle the intermittency of the wind resource with up to 86% of their annual load met. More work is needed to understand the impact of integrating and scheduling dispatchable loads into the grid in practice.

Read the paper “Novel wind resource assessment and demand flexibility analysis for community resilience: A remote microgrid case study.”

 

Wind turbines in a Southwestern Alaska Community.  Photo by Amanda Byrd.