The impact of wind-power generation on the planning of regulating reserve

Abstract

This doctoral thesis focuses on the efficient management of a power system with a large share of wind-power generation and on the methods for planning the operating reserve. The approach proposed in this research involves the use of data directly from the network’s dispatch center and the forecasting systems, as well as already existing day-ahead plans for wind and load power to determine the regulating reserve for the load frequency control (LFC). The same principle is used to find the optimal regulating reserve distribution (RRD) between the available generation units in the system for automatic generation control. It is developed using iterative power-flow computation with a reactive power correction and a stochastic search algorithm for transmission-loss minimization. Moreover, variations in the generation of individual wind-power plants (WPPs) from the plan are considered in the optimal RRD. A special focus of this research has been put on the Croatian power system due to the accessibility of relevant information and operating data. The obtained results of the testing with actual data from the Croatian power system indicate substantial savings in ancillary service costs for the LFC, while ensuring safe system operation. The considerable impact of variations from the plan for each individual WPP generation on the optimal RRD was also identified. Comparing the results for the daily sum of regulating reserves obtained with the proposed and the currently used approaches, the corresponding costs indicate a total saving of 21.2% for all 12 selected days in 2015 when using the proposed approach. In practice, a part of the reserve can be slow, i.e., with a lower unit price, thus the savings would be even higher. Furthermore, the obtained optimal RRD computed according to the proposed approach was compared with four commonly used RRDs in Croatia. The results obtained using the proposed approach indicate a decrease in the total transmission losses of between 1% and 2%. With a larger share of the generation from the WPPs and with more dispersed locations of the WPPs and regulating power plants a larger reduction in the transmission losses is expected.