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Title: Wind Power Plants and System Operation in the Hourly Time Domain: Preprint

Conference ·
OSTI ID:15003902

Because wind is an intermittent power source, the variability may have significant impacts on system operation. Part of the difficulty of analyzing the load following impact of wind is the inadequacy of most modeling frameworks to accurately treat wind plants and the difficulty of untangling causal impacts of wind plants from other dynamic phenomena. This paper presents a simple analysis of an hourly load-following requirement that can be performed without extensive computer modeling. The approach is therefore useful as a first step to quantifying these impacts when extensive modeling and data sets are not available. The variability that wind plants add to the electricity supply must be analyzed in the context of overall system variability. The approach used in this paper does just that. The results show that wind plants do have an impact on load following, but when calculated as a percentage of the installed wind plant capacity, this impact is not large. Another issue is the extent to which wind forecast errors add to imbalance. The relative statistical independence of wind forecast errors and load forecast errors can be used to help quantify the extent to which wind forecast errors impact overall system imbalances.

Research Organization:
National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
DOE Contract Number:
AC36-99-GO10337
OSTI ID:
15003902
Report Number(s):
NREL/CP-500-33955; TRN: US201015%%194
Resource Relation:
Conference: Prepared for WINDPOWER 2003, 18-21 May 2003, Austin, Texas
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English