Optimization of the Wind Farm Layout by Repowering the old Wind Farm and integrating Solar Power Plants: A Case Study

Most of the wind farms established in Tamil Nadu, India, in the early 2000s have reached the end of their targeted useful life. These turbines are colonized potentially wind-rich regions and either need to be dismantled or repowered. They are embedded in a 5Dx 7D arrangement, and large areas of underutilized land lie between them. The repowering of old turbines and the development of solar power plants on underutilized land between them would help to optimize the usage of existing infrastructure and natural resources. The primary purpose of this study is to support sustainable growth in the generation of wind turbines by repowering old wind turbines. The 6 Mega Watt (MW) old wind farm in Kayathar, Tuticorin District, Tamil Nadu, was chosen as the region of interest for this study. Based on data collection from January 2016 to December 2016, an average annual wind speed of 6.92 m/s at 120 meters and an annual Global Horizontal Irradiation (GHI) of 4.92-5.21 kWh/m2 /day was observed. Energy estimates have been made using the Wind Atlas Analysis and Application Program (WAsP) and the PVSyst software. Analytical results demonstrate that when modern wind turbines were supplemented with older, largercapacity wind turbines, overall power generation increased from 3.50 Giga Watt-hour (GWh) to 40GWh at the P90 confidence level with a ratio of 1:1.25 to 1:3-fold generation ratio and an energy yield ratio of 1:1.61 to 1:7.82-fold. The combined repowered wind turbines with the integrated solar power system have demonstrated substantial increases in annual energy production in the vicinity of 38-76 GWh / year, suggesting the use of hybrid electricity as a reliable source