A powerful visualization technique for electricity supply and demand at industrial sites with combined heat and power and wind generation

The combination of wind generation and combined heat and power (CHP) on an industrial site brings significant design and operational challenges. The stochastic nature of wind power affects the flows of electricity imported and exported to and from the site. Economies of scale favor larger wind turbines, but at the same time it is also desirable to minimize the amount of electricity exported from the site to avoid incurring increased network infrastructure usage charges. Therefore the optimum situation is to maximize the proportion of the site load served by on-site generation. This paper looks at a visualization technique for power flows on an industrial site, which can be used to size on-site generators. The technique is applied to a test case, demonstrating how a simple combined heat and power control scheme can support the integration of on-site wind power. The addition of such CHP control has a small impact on the CHP unit but can greatly increase the proportion of wind generation consumed on-site. This visualization technique allows the comparison of different generation mixes and control schemes in order to arrive at the optimal mix from a technical and economic viewpoint.