Adequacy studies of different renewable resources using Monte Carlo simulation method

Produced power of wind, solar, run of the river, ocean thermal, tidal and wave power plants is respectively, dependent on wind velocity, sun radiation, river flow, temperature of ocean upstream, period & height of waves, tidal level or tidal stream velocity. Due to wide change in these quantities, produced power of these renewable resources changes a lot over time. As the penetration level of renewable resources in electric network is increased, reliability and other aspects of electric network may be affected that should be studied. Analytical method is not suitable to study uncertainties of output power of renewable resources in reliability analysis of electric network with these renewable power plants. Thus, the current research suggests Monte Carlo simulation method to study effect of renewable power plants on reliability indices. Renewable power plants studied in the research are wind turbines, solar farms, wave energy converters, run of the river power plants, both types of tidal units, and ocean thermal energy conversion systems. Numerical studies are performed on test electric networks, to study these renewable resources impact on reliability indices of electric networks with renewable power plants. It is concluded from numerical outcomes that these renewable power plants improve reliability performance of electric network. However, due to the variation of renewable resources, the impact of renewable power plants on reliability performance of the electric network is less than the conventional units with the same capacity.