Abstract:
Rising energy
demand, fossil fuel costs, and greenhouse gas emissions have led to a
growing interest in renewable energy integration. Remote communities,
often accompanied by high energy costs and abundant renewable energy
resources, are ideal cases for renewable energy integration. The Queen
Charlotte Islands, also known as Haida Gwaii, are a remote archipelago
off the northwest coast of British Columbia, Canada that relies heavily
on diesel fuel for energy generation. An investigation is done into the
potential for electricity generation using both tidal stream and wave
energy in Haida Gwaii. A mixed integer optimization network model is
developed in a Matlab and GAMS software environment, subject to set of
system constraints including minimum operational levels and transmission
capacities. The unit commitment and economic dispatch decisions are
dynamically solved for four periods of 336 hours, representing the four
annual seasons. Optimization results are used to develop an operational
strategy simulation model, indicative of realistic operator behaviour.
Results from both models find that the tidal stream energy resource in
Haida Gwaii has a larger potential to reduce energy costs than wave
energy; however, tidal steam energy is more difficult to integrate from a
system operation point of view and, in the absence of storage, would
only be practical at power penetration levels less than 20%.
