Wind/Hybrid Power System Test Facilities in the United States and Canada

By 1995, there will be four facilities available for testing of wind/hybrid power systems in the United States and Canada. This paper describes the mission, approach, capabilities, and status of activity at each of these facilities. These facilities have in common a focus on power systems for remote, off-grid locations that include wind energy. At the same time, these facilities have diverse, yetcomplimentary, missions that range from research to technology development to testing. The first facility is the test facility at the Institut de Recherche d'Hydro-Quebec (IREQ), Hydro-Quebec's research institute near Montreal, Canada. This facility, not currently in operation, was used for initial experiments demonstrating the dynamic stability of a high penetration, no-storage wind/diesel(HPNSWD) concept. The second facility is located at the Atlantic Wind Test Site (AWTS) on Prince Edward Island, Canada, where testing of the HPNSWD concept developed by Hydro-Quebec is currently underway. The third is the Hybrid Power Test Facility planned for the National Wind Technology Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, which will focus on testingcommercially available hybrid power systems. The fourth is the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Conservation and Production Research Laboratory in Bushland, Texas, where a test laboratory is being developed to study wind-energy penetration and control strategies for wind/hybrid systems. The authors recognize that this summary of test facilities is not all inclusive; for example, at leastone U.S. industrial facility is currently testing a hybrid power system. Or intent, though, is to describe four facilities owned by nonprofit or governmental institutions in North America that are or will be available for ongoing development of wind/hybrid power systems.