Two of the most significant challenges facing the world in the 21st century are improving energy security and mitigating the effects of climate change. To counter these challenges, renewable energy sources, such as wind, are considered a possible solution and have gained importance worldwide. With many jurisdictions setting high wind-energy targets for the coming decades, risks have grown as the demand for new wind turbines has outstripped the growth of its suppliers. Integrating significant amounts of wind-electricity into existing networks raises reliability concerns due to variable nature of wind. A method for estimating the reliability of wind-energy systems is presented which is a combination of a forecasting method (probabilistic approach) and RL (Resistance-Load) technique (risk-based approach), demonstrated through a case study, and verified using real-time wind farm data.

The electricity sector is a major source of carbon dioxide emission that contributes to the global climate change. Over the past decade wind energy has steadily emerged as a potential source for low carbon energy source which are grown through time. As wind power generation increases around the world, there is increasing interest in adding intermittent power to the electricity grid and to design an off-grid wind energy system. The goal of the current thesis is to investigate techno-economically viable wind energy system that supplies electricity and Heat for a given residential community in Ethiopia. To ease the optimization process, HOMER software is used to identify the potential wind area and optimize cost effective wind energy system.