The Wind-Solar Hybrid Map has been prepared by combing the wind potential map at 120 agl and solar atlas prepared by National Institute of Wind Energy (NIWE), Chennai. Both the maps are combined in terms of %CUF at the 500m spatial resolution. In order to estimate the hybrid suitability, the %CUF values of both the maps are initially normalized to 0 – 50% and added together to the maximum value of 100%. The regions with Wind %CUF more than 35% and solar %CUF more than 20% are considered as the most suitable sites for Hybrid with suitability factor of 100%. The aforesaid methodology Shown in below flow chart.
Effective %CUF is defined as the ratio of the actual energy supplied from a hybrid plant over the year to the maximum possible energy that can be supplied against the declared project capacity at injection point (delivery point) in a year. The effective %CUF in general varies with respect to the combination of wind and solar plant capacity. As per the National Wind-Solar Hybrid Policy, a wind-solar plant will be recognized as hybrid plant if the rated power capacity of one resource is at least 25% of the rated power capacity of other resource. Considering the same, the effective %CUF in this study has been estimated for three combinations viz., 75% Wind: 25% Solar, 50% Wind: 50% Solar, 25% Wind: 75% Solar with the predefined injection capacity and shown as the bar graph.
Another important aspect of Hybrid plant is defining the plant capacity at the delivery point, which requires a detailed site-specific study based on the wind and solar time series energy generation. However, due to non-availability of time-series data for all the grid cells and as the main objective of this study is prospecting - to indicate new wind solar hybrid project areas, the Hybrid plant capacity at the delivery point is predefined in this study for the Effective %CUF estimation.