John J., Ramírez C.
(2015)
MERRA–based study of the wind/solar resources and their complementarity to the hydro resource for power generation in Colombia.
Masters, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg.
Abstract
An energy generation matrix with large shares on hydro power such as the case of Colombia presents a strong vulnerability mainly caused by global meteorological phenomenas. Principally driven by times of critical hydrology, an interest of investigating in detail the wind and the solar resources of the country has slowly started in recent years. Aiming to get a deeper knowledge about these resources as well as their complementarities for the Colombian hydrology, this self-started investigation was carried from February to August 2015.
Among other variables, hourly wind speeds @50m and surface solar irradiations of the MERRA Reanalysis for 1.014 grid points were processed for the period 2001-2014 and translated to monthly values. These grid points covered the whole Colombian territory. The sites with the highest resources in the country were selected: 13 wind sites and 14 solar sites. Because of the model resolution and local weather effects not “seen” by MERRA, the wind resource is likely to be strongly underestimated over the Andes (altitudes over 5.000m) but well reproduced in the coastal areas of the north. The solar resource seems to be slightly overestimated over the Andes. Although the Annual Energy Productions (AEP) of wind and solar parks were done, they are first estimates and are expected to be strongly underestimated, especially for the wind parks. In general, the found monthly patterns of the variables during the year are in accordance with the literature and are mainly explained by the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). Inter-Annual Variabilities (IAV) of 2,9-8,5% for the wind sites and of 2-2,6% for the solar sites were found.
The monthly in-flows of the rivers feeding 19 large hydro power plants representing 66,6% of the installed capacity in the country were processed for the same time span. The mean intra-annual Pearson´s correlation coefficients (R) for every year were found between all the pairs wind-hydro and solar hydro. With R>0,5, the intra-annual complementarities are mostly observed between in-flows of the north and winds of the north as well as in-flows of the south and winds of the south/centre. The same behaviour is seen for the hydro-solar pairs. Furthermore, the mean annual values of the resources were calculated and the inter-annual correlation coefficient for the same pairs were assessed. With R>0,5, the inter-annual complementarities are mostly observed between in-flows of the north and wind speeds of the Eastern Andes. For the hydro-solar, the largest coefficients are between in-flows of the north and solar insolations of the south/centre.
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