Applicability of multi-agent control for virtual inertia modes in a wind power plant

Abstract

This work presents a literature review devoted to increasing the efficiency and quality of managing wind power plants. The analysis focuses on mitigating the adverse effects of wind turbines on the power system and providing system services, such as primary frequency regulation. Nearly 150 scientific publications and reviews, selected from various scientific sources (such as IEEE, Web of Science and Scopus) by the keywords, including “wind power station”, “wind turbine”, “multi-agent control”, “virtual inertia”, “microgrid”, “virtual power plant”, and “frequency control”, were evaluated.A systematic review methodology of specialised sources was applied, which offers a defined structure for this field of research by categorising articles. The study emphasises the urgency of developing technologies to increase the regulation capacity of a wind power plant, since the low inertia of renewable energy sources leads to a decrease in the stability of power systems, a significant proportion of which accounts for wind power plants. It follows from the literature review that one of the means to increase the stability of such power systems is the creation of virtual inertia for wind power plants. However, due to the limited capacity and control capabilities of each individual wind turbine, the efficiency of introduced virtual inertia may be insufficient, when implemented for individual units. Moreover, it is shown that uncoordinated control can affect the stability of the system. In this review, the specific sources considering coordinated multi-agent control of the virtual inertia for several wind turbines (wind power plants) were analysed. The review concludes that the proposed approach is currently understudied, while the outlined theses can be confirmed by developing the necessary algorithms and analysing the results.