Impacts of Wind Power on Thermal Generation Unit Commitment and Dispatch

Abstract

Abstract-This paper proposes a new simulation method that can fully assess the impacts of large-scale wind power on system operations from cost, reliability, and environmental perspectives. The method uses a time series of observed and predicted 15-min average wind speeds at foreseen onshore-and offshore-wind farm locations. A Unit Commitment and Economic Dispatch (UC-ED) tool is adapted to allow for frequent revisions of conventional generation unit schedules, using information on current wind energy output and forecasts for the next 36 h. This is deemed the most faithful way of simulating actual operations and short-term planning activities for a system with large wind power penetration. The problem formulation includes ramp-rate constraints for generation schedules and for reserve activation, and minimum up-time and down-time of conventional units. Results are shown for a realistic future scenario of the Dutch power system. It is shown that problems such as insufficient regulating and reserve power-which are typically associated with the variablility and limited predictability of wind power-can only be assessed in conjunction with the specifics of the conventional generation system that wind power is integrated into. For the thermal system with a large share of combined heat and power (CHP) investigated here, wind power forecasting does not provide significant benefits for optimal unit commitment and dispatch. Minimum load problems do occur, which result in wasted wind in amounts increasing with the wind power installed.Index Terms-Power system integration, unit commitment and economic dispatch, wind power, wind power forecast.

Assessing the value of wind generation in future carbon constrained electricity industries

“…It is this curve which has to be met by the conventional generation technologies in the portfolio. Wind power is considered exogenous and treated as negative load given that it has very low operating costs and can offset the need to dispatch conventional fossil-fuel generation Doherty et al, 2006;Ummels et al, 2007). This approach incorporates the variability of wind generation and also captures the actual relationship between typically weather and climate dependent renewable generation sources and electricity demand.…”

On the management of wind power intermittency

“…Moreover, the additional reserve must be coordinated with generation ramping to rapidly respond to wind generation intermittency. There are several solutions to this problem such as employing storage systems or extra power transaction with adjacent power systems as well as using conventional generation systems with fast response like gas units [58][59][60]. The main contribution of this paper is to introduce systems with ability to rapidly respond to wind power generation and cover the wind power intermittency.…”

Multi-Time Scale Rolling Economic Dispatch for Wind/Storage Power System Based on Forecast Error Feature Extraction

“…Overestimation or underestimation of wind power would lead to reserves under-committed, causing wind curtailment and load shedding [6]. Therefore, how to handle the wind power forecast error (WPFE) becomes a research hotspot [7][8][9].…”