Impact of wind power on power system operation

       

Further reading

• Webinar Presentation - Impact of wind power on power system operation (7019)
• Impact of wind energy in a future power grid (4192)

Date: February 16, 2006 - 14h00 Europe Standard time
Duration: 1 hour
Speaker: Joris Soens, KULeuven

This presentation is based on a thesis which investigated on various levels the technical impact of wind power on the operation of the electrical power system.

First, the state of the art of actual wind turbines is briefly reviewed.

Then, the importance of specific ‘grid connection requirements’ is explained. These requirements are generally a set of technical demands that wind turbines have to comply with in order not to cause instability of the electrical power grid. This issue has gained importance since the fast increase of installed wind power in some European countries, e.g. Denmark, Germany and Spain. Whether a wind turbine complies with these technical requirements or not can be examined using detailed dynamic models of wind turbines. This is pointed out in this dissertation.

In a next part, all wind power production units in one control zone (i.e. a zone where one power system operator controls the transmission system) are hypothetically considered together as one power plant. The value of this aggregated wind power production is discussed, using three different value indicators: 1) the capacity factor, 2) the capacity credit, and 3) the abatement of carbon dioxide emissions by the other power plants in the regarded control zone. This final value indicator highly depends on the grid considered. The value of wind power is worked out for the specific case of the Belgium, for various scenarios of wind power that can be installed in the future.