Wind Generator & Biomass No-draft Gasification Hybrid

The premise of this research is that underutilized but vast intermittent renewable energy resources, such as wind, can become more market competitive by coupling with storable renewable energy sources, like biomass; thereby creating a firm capacity resource. Specifically, the Midwest state of South Dakota has immense wind energy potential that is not used because of economic and logistic barriers of electrical transmission or storage. Coupling the state's intermittent wind resource with another of the state's energy resources, cellulosic non-food biomass, by using a wind generator and no-draft biomass gasification hybrid system will result in a energy source that is both firm and storable.;The average energy content of common biomass feedstock was determined, 14.8 MJ/kg (7.153 Btu/lb), along with the assumed typical biomass conversion efficiency of the no-draft gasifier, 65%, so that an average electrical energy round trip efficiency (RTE) of 214% can be expected (i.e. One unit of wind electrical energy can produce 2.14 kWh of electrical energy stored as syngas.) from a wind generator and no-draft biomass gasification system.;Wind characteristics are site specific so this analysis utilizes a synthetic wind resource to represent a statistically sound gross representation of South Dakota's wind regime based on data from the Wind Resource Assessment Network (WRAN) locations. A synthetic wind turbine generated from common wind turbine power curves and scaled to 1-MW rated capacity was utilized for this analysis in order to remove equipment bias from the results. A standard 8,760-hour BIN Analysis model was constructed within HOMER, powerful simulation software developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to model the performance of renewable power systems.;It was found that the optimum configuration on a per-megawatt-transmitted basis required a wind generator (wind farm) rated capacity of 3-MW with an anticipated annual biomass feedstock of 26,132 GJ or an anticipated 1,766 tonnes of biomass. The levelized cost of electricity (COE) ranged from ;The resulting electrical energy available to the grid has an approximate wholesale value of ;Additional benefits of the system are in the flexibility of transporting wind and biomass energy produced as well as the end use of the energy. Instead of high-voltage electrical transmission a gas line can now be used to transport energy produced by the wind. Syngas can also be further processed into higher energy density liquefied syngas. Liquid fuels can then be transported via commercial freight on existing road infrastructure.