Benchmarking of current hybrid energy system design tools - an update of work within IEA Task 50 Hybrid Power Plants: Work Package 3

Hybrid power plants and hybrid energy systems are a current topic of research and have many potential uses within the resilient and efficient energy infrastructure of the future. An International Energy Agency (IEA) Wind Technology Collaboration Programme (TCP) task, Task 50, was developed for wind-based hybrid power plants to coordinate international research and development. Within IEA Wind Task 50, Work Package 3 [1] was organized to evaluate hybrid power plant modeling, control, and design options, determine their Technology Readiness Level (TRL), and identify gaps in capabilities that are needed for them to achieve their full potential. The output of the task will be an overview and comparison of the available tools as applied to a set of system configurations, as well as guidance for future development. As part of this task, a benchmarking exercise has been started with two open-source hybrid design tools: GreenHEART [2] and HyDesign [3, 4]. The benchmarking effort is made available at https://github.com/IEAWindTask50/tool-benchmarking, with site definitions and input files for the two tools. This abstract presents preliminary data from the benchmarking effort.