Evaluation of Supply–Demand Adaptation of Photovoltaic–Wind Hybrid Plants Integrated into an Urban Environment

Abstract

A massive integration of renewable energy sources is imperative to comply with the greenhouse emissions reduction targets fixed to achieve the limitation of global warming. Nevertheless, the present integration levels are still far from the targets. The main reason being the technical barriers arising from their non-manageable features. Photovoltaic and wind sources are the widest spread, as their maturity allows generation with a high-efficiency degree. A deep understanding of facilities’ performance and how they can match the energy demand is mandatory to reduce costs and extend the technical limits and facilitate their penetration. In this paper, we present a novel methodology to evaluate how photovoltaic–wind hybrid facilities, placed in an urban environment can give generation patterns which will be able to match the demand profiles better than facilities installed individually. This methodology has been applied to a broad number of locations spread over the whole planet. The results show that with high homogeneity in terms of site weather characteristics, the hybrid facilities improve the matching up to 15% over photovoltaic plants and up to 35% over wind.