Supervisors - Dr. Olimpo Anaya-Lara, University of Strathclyde and Prof. Robin Wallace, University of Edinburgh
PhD Student - William Ross, University of Strathclyde
Status - Closed
Power systems worldwide are in a phase of radical change and transforming to systems based on renewable energy source. In these systems, wind energy will play the predominant role in the energy generation.
The increase in renewable sources of power supply pose however a number of questions as to security of supply. Uptake of high wind penetrations involves technical, economic and regulatory impacts. At the intersect of all these issues, is the grid operators ability to maintain frequency and voltage for the network customers.
In the event of a fault or outage, operators rely on spinning reserve and ancillary services from a range of generators to maintain system frequency and prevent cascading loss of load. These services have been traditionally provided from conventional generating plant.
Hence, to enable high wind penetration, wind farms, clusters or (virtual) wind power plants must be operated as far as possible as conventional power plants, emulating their dynamic characteristics and provision of ancillary services such as reactive power and frequency response. Additionally, for rapid uptake of ancillary services the provision of a more constant supply should be considered, potentially considering on or offshore storage.
From the above it can be seen that there is an R&D need to further develop electric design and control of wind power plant that can provide ancillary services, and to develop simulation models and demonstrations to validate that such future wind power plant actually support the system security. It should also be considered which services are advantageous to provide from wind power plants, through cost-benefits analysis, and which are more advantageous to provide from other sources such as flexible loads.
OBJECTIVES
To gain understanding on wind power plant capabilities and requirements to behave like conventional synchronous plant.
To design novel control approaches that enable wind power plant to provide synthetic inertia and frequency response, through both, ac and dc interconnections.
To design a coordinated-control algorithm for provision of reactive power support from wind power plant and enabling technology such as STATCOM and VSC-HVDC power converters.
To investigate the role of energy storage in facilitating wind farms to provide ancillary services. The focus here will be more on large-scale storage through pan-European interconnectors, however a full appraisal of energy storage technology will be conducted.
To generate concepts, control design tools, information and data for a better understanding and utilisation of advanced wind power plant capabilities to provide power system ancillary services.