ABSTRACT
The Gorona del Viento hybrid power plant project, implemented in 2014 on the island of El Hierro, is a successful example of the use of renewable energy sources to supply electricity to many consumers. The operating experience of this hybrid power plant is quite important for the further development of such projects. It should be especially noted that the parameters of all elements of this hybrid power plant are publicly available on the Red Eléctrica de España website in real time, which allows for a detailed analysis of operating experience, as well as to check the effectiveness of using various technologies for active control of an isolated power system in order to optimize its parameters and improving its efficiency.
An increase in the share of the use of renewable energy sources in the overall balance of electricity generation significantly complicates the effective management of the network. A flexible smart grid can produce predictable and reliable power by using real-time demand forecasting and continuous analytics across the entire grid. For these purposes, the technology of virtual power plants (VPPs) is best suited in combination with sufficiently effective systems for short-term power forecasting and active consumer management.
This work is devoted to the presentation of the experience of building a VPP to work in conjunction with a hybrid power plant “Gorona del Viento”, located on the island of El Hierro. For these purposes, the chapter presents a detailed analysis of the operating experience of the hybrid power plant “Gorona del Viento” over the past three years. It also describes the developed software package for predicting the load in the electrical network using artificial intelligence technologies, neural networks, deep machine learning and simulation (digital twins).
