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Title:
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Technology needs for island renewable energy systems
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Author(s):
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Published by:
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Publication date:
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ECN
Solar Energy
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1-7-1999
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ECN report number:
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Document type:
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ECN-RX--99-022
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Article (scientific)
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Number of pages:
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10
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Published in: Paper presented at the Island Solar Summit Conference, Tenerife, [Spain], May 7-8, 1999 (), , , Vol., p.-.
Abstract:
In the early eighties, during the start of the modern renewable energydevelopment period, relatively much attention was paid to utilising wind and
solar energy systems to provide electricity to remote, isolated communities
without any energy infrastructure. As the supply of wind and solar energy
varies stochastically in time, energy supply and energy demand do not match
most of the time. To provide security of supply, a storage system is needed,
which absorbs energy during periods that supply exceeds demand and supplies
energy in times that the situation is reversed. Storage of energy in general
and of electricity in particular is very expensive. So in order to overcome
this cost problem solutions were sought in so called autonomous - hybrid -
systems where wind turbines and/or solar photovoltaic (PV) systems were
working in parallel to diesel units. Many experiments were carried out and
more than 10 research establishments had more or less comprehensive
development programmes. Looking back from the present situation, one can
conclude that all the development efforts on autonomous systems only had
limited success, contrary to grid connected wind and solar PV systems, which
grew to an annual $ 4 billion world market (and is still growing by some 25 %
annually). The need for independent island renewable energy system has not
changed since. Analysing and understanding the reasons why this happened
could provide us with the conditions for a real successful revival of the
development and market implementation of autonomous systems. 3 refs.
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