Optimal Siting of Distributed Wind Farms in Ontario, Canada

• Main Author: Binnington, Taylor
• Other Authors: Harvey, L. D. Danny
• Language: en_ca
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: wind energy; spatial dispersion; 0368
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/35110

Increasing wind penetration adds to the importance of enhancing the reliability of wind, to mitigate the magnitude and frequency of changes in electricity generation. This work addresses how improvements can be made to reliability through the geographic dispersal of wind farms in Ontario, Canada, using modeled North American Regional Reanalysis data. Optimal configurations of wind farm locations are determined according to two criteria. The first selects combinations of wind farms that follow temporal demand patterns, by maximizing the difference between the energy price and the cost of electricity. The second attempts to select combinations of wind farms that minimize the coefficient of variation in the aggregate output. It is found that there are no wind regimes in Ontario that match demand sufficiently for a viable development strategy, but that combinations of as few as three locations can reduce the coefficient of variation by over 30%, compared to a single region.