Chapter 19 - Electric vehicles and electric storage systems participation in provision of flexible ramp service

Abstract

The movement of power systems toward carbon-free systems, where renewable energy sources (RESs) would play a key role in supplying the consumers, has raised new issues in the operation and planning of systems. As a result, the noncontrollable nature of these resources increases variability and uncertainty associated with the net load of the system. In this regard, utilities are actively looking for devising and employing new efficient procedures to address these operational and planning issues in power systems. One of the issues that has attracted a lot of interest in recent years is the ramping capability to address the highly potential variability in the net load of power systems with high penetration of RESs. In this regard, determining the flexible ramp required for reliable operation of power systems would become challenging in these systems due to the fact that the power output of RESs mainly depends on uncertain meteorological parameters such as wind speed and solar irradiance. Consequently, the uncertain and intermittent nature of RESs, as well as other nondispatchable resources such as load demands, could deteriorate the flexibility of power systems. In this respect, new methodologies have recently been proposed to ensure the flexibility of the system from the ramping capacity perspective. Generally, these approaches primarily strive to facilitate the efficient incorporation of flexible resources in the operation of power systems. In this regard, electrical vehicles (EVs) and electrical storage systems (ESSs) as flexible resources could significantly affect the flexibility of the power system by providing flexible ramp service that ensures efficient and reliable operation of the system. This chapter aims to review the important concepts in flexible ramping product courses and state-of-the-art techniques that enable participation of EVs/ESSs in the provision of flexible ramping service in different operational management levels of restructured power systems.