Abstract
Academic discussion continues as to whether a fleet of grid-connected wind farms, widely dispersed across a single grid network, can provide a reliable electricity supply. One opinion is that wide geographical dispersion of wind farms provides sufficient smoothing of the intermittent and highly variable output of individual wind farms enabling the wind farm fleet to provide for base load demand. In an examination of the 5-minute time-averaged wind farm operational data for 21 large wind farms connected to the eastern Australian grid - geographically the largest, most widely dispersed, single interconnected grid in the world (AER, [1]) - this paper challenges that opinion. The findings also suggest that the connection of such a wind farm fleet, even one that is widely dispersed, poses significant security and reliability concerns to the eastern Australian grid. These findings have similar implications for the impact of wind farms on the security of electricity grids worldwide.
Highlights
Oswald et al [2], performing an analysis of the 10-metre wind data available from the UK meteorological office, demonstrated that there is evidence to doubt the view that wide geographic dispersion of wind farms across the United Kingdom National Grid would be sufficient to smooth the collective outputs of that wind farm fleet. (It is generally accepted that the output of any single wind farm is inherently highly variable and intermittent (Diesendorf, [3]).) In particular, Oswald et al demonstrated that the occurrence of mid-winter blocking high pressure systems might result in prolonged periods where the entire wind farm fleet in the UK region generated little or no electricity
This paper presents the findings of an analysis of the performance of the AEMO-listed1, and significantly larger, wind farm fleet, for the later period of 1 January – 31 December 2010 inclusive
That a common-mode forced outage of the wind fleet might be predicted with any certainty up to some hours in advance is of little consequence, the net result is that a fleet of new-build fast-acting open-cycle gas turbines (OCGT) plant, of comparable capacity to that of the total installed wind capacity, constantly operational in standby mode, is required to balance wind’s mercurial behaviour
Summary
Oswald et al [2], performing an analysis of the 10-metre wind data available from the UK meteorological office, demonstrated that there is evidence to doubt the view that wide geographic dispersion of wind farms across the United Kingdom National Grid would be sufficient to smooth the collective outputs of that wind farm fleet. (It is generally accepted that the output of any single wind farm is inherently highly variable and intermittent (Diesendorf, [3]).) In particular, Oswald et al (ibid.) demonstrated that the occurrence of mid-winter blocking high pressure systems might result in prolonged periods where the entire wind farm fleet in the UK region generated little or no electricity. TOTAL WIND FARM FLEET PERFORMANCE FOR CALENDAR YEAR 2010 Each of the four panels of Figure 3 shows three months of electricity output of the total reported wind farm fleet on the eastern Australian grid. This may be a result of the increase in the CF This suggests that even though there is an increase in average CF during the latter half of the year, the lack of significant difference in the total number of such dips to below the MAL between the two sets of 6-monthly data (58 vs 51), indicates that there is another, overriding, mechanism operating (presumably meteorological), separate from any increase in average wind speeds, that continues to cause the frequent, if shorter, dips in total output
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