Ancillary services from wind turbines: AGC from a single Type 4 turbine

Abstract

Abstract. Wind turbines possess the technical ability to provide various ancillary services to the electrical grid. Several regions have set ambitious targets of providing an increasing share of annual electrical energy from wind and other renewable sources of generation. Despite this, renewable generators such as wind and solar have traditionally not been allowed to provide significant amounts of ancillary services, in part due to the variable and uncertain nature of their electricity generation. Increasing levels of renewable generation, however, continue to displace existing synchronous generation and thus necessitate new sources of ancillary or system services. This work is part of an ongoing project that seeks to provide empirical evidence of how ancillary services can be provided from wind turbines. We focus specifically on providing secondary frequency response (AGC) and demonstrate that wind turbines have the technical capability to provide this service. The algorithms used are intentionally simple so as to evaluate the capabilities and limitations of the turbine technology. This work presents results from a single, 800 kW, IEC Type 4 wind turbine. 10 % of rated power is offered on the regulation market. We do not separate up- and down-regulation into individual services. Up-regulation is offered through a 5 % constant power curtailment. The AGC update interval is 4 s, to mimic real-world conditions. We use performance scoring methods from the Pennsylvania-Jersey-Maryland (PJM) operator and the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada to quantify the wind turbine's response. We use the calculated performance scores, annual site wind data and 2017 PJM market price data to estimate income from providing secondary frequency regulation. In all cases presented, income from the regulation market is greater than the energy income lost due to curtailment.

Review of Stationary Energy Storage Systems Applications, Their Placement, and Techno-Economic Potential

“…Regarding the ability to provide AS, RES technologies differ from each other to some extent. For example, wind turbines can provide a certain degree of synthetic inertia [15,78], which is not possible for PV parks [16]. For the provision of some AS, the RES plant must therefore be additionally equipped with a storage system.…”

Automatic Generation Control in Modern Power Systems with Wind Power and Electric Vehicles

“…Over the past decade, intensified research work was conducted in both academia and industry to develop ancillary services for wind power plants systems [4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. The authors in [4] presented the results from various tests to evaluate the performance of an 800 kW, IEC Type 4 wind turbine (located in Regina, SK, Canada) in providing the secondary frequency response (AGC). The details about the technical capabilities and limitations of wind turbine technology to provide the secondary response service to the grid are presented.…”

“…However, several bottlenecks remain in terms of effectively and efficiently using wind energy and electric vehicles' capacity for grid ancillary services. For instance, in [4][5][6][7][8], the secondary frequency control (AGC) strategies are based on static optimization techniques, which do not consider the generating unit operating constraints and dispatch the generating unit's power signals using a predefined participating factor. This approach cannot anticipate the current loading of generators and might influence the security of system operations.…”

“…This approach cannot anticipate the current loading of generators and might influence the security of system operations. In [4], the presented approach for AGC to support the grid operation in a large-scale wind-based power system is based on the fact that regulation from wind power is fixed at several specific values. Moreover, the power curtailment issue in the utilization of wind power for regulation purpose has not been addressed.…”