Oil Shale, Vol.26, No.3, 294-308, 2009
COMBINED HEAT AND POWER PLANTS BALANCING WIND POWER
Wind power (WP) is the most developing area in the Estonian renewable energy sector, but there are technical limitations oil its integration. At a certain capacity some balancing measures are required to handle large amounts of WP. This could be achieved by introducing combined heat and power plants (CHP) at regional level. The use of gas engine allows quick response to load changes and therefore is suitable for regulating activities. As for principles of distributed power generation, the aim is to locally minimise the shortfall and surplus of electricity. By this additional costs of rebuilding power lines and building new balancing generation units can be avoided. In this paper possibility of balancing WP with CHP is analysed. The investigation is carried out with the help of energy PRO software, which allows simulating the cooperation of WP and CHP. Also the essence of building heat storage is analysed, to add flexibility into the plant operation.