Assessment of the grid-related loss of offsite power to the nuclear power plants in the presence of wind farms

Abstract

Grid stability affects the progression of loss of offsite power scenarios to the nuclear power plants, as the most dominant core-damage-inducing initiating event. The ever-increasing tendency toward integration of large-scale wind farms into the transmission systems drastically challenges their dynamic behavior.In this study, we proposed a dynamic-probabilistic framework to evaluate the effect of wind penetration scenarios on the frequency of occurrence of LOOP to the NPPs. We developed 30 initial grid states, including 3 wind penetration percentages, 5 operational loading levels, in both optimal and normal power flows.We estimated 150 GR-LOOP frequencies for 5 NPP locations upon 3Ph-Shc faults on the transmission lines. Extending from 1.3 × 10−7 to 9.6 × 10−5 (year)−1 for the safest to the riskiest situations, the mean GR-LOOP frequencies have been assessed as 1.74 × 10−5, 2.96 × 10−5, and 2.77 × 10−5 (year)−1, for grids with 0%, 10%, and, 20% penetration percentage of installed wind generation, respectively.Our results indicate the undeniable influence of variations in the operational loadings and the wind penetration percentage on the GR-LOOP frequency, in addition to the NPPs’ locations. Such intensification effect was more pronounced in instantaneous frequencies of unique states than in the averaged ones. Furthermore, we observed more outstanding growth in the corresponding values of optimal cases. Our findings suggested that the reliability of the offsite grid to the NPPs be considered as a decision-making criterion, in addition to the existing security and economic issues in the grids with wind penetration.