Hierarchical Control of Utility-Scale Solar PV Plants for Mitigation of Generation Variability and Ancillary Service Provision

Simon Julien, Bri-Mathias Hodge, Amirhossein Sajadi

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

16 Scopus Citations

Abstract

This paper presents a hierarchical control system to mitigate the variability of solar photovoltaic (PV) power plant and provide ancillary services to the electric grid without the need for additional non-solar resources. With coordinated management of each inverter in the system, the control system commands the power plant to proactively curtail a small fraction of its instantaneous maximum power potential, which gives the plant enough headroom to ramp up production from the overall power plant, for a service such as regulation reserve. This control system is practical for continuously changing cloud cover conditions in partially cloudy days. A case study from a site in Hawaii with one-second resolution solar irradiance data is used to verify the efficacy of the proposed control system. The proposed control algorithm is subsequently compared with the alternative control technology from the literature, the grouping control algorithm; the results show that the proposed hierarchical control system is over 10 times more effective in reducing generator mileage to support power fluctuations from solar PV power plants.

Original languageAmerican English
Pages (from-to)1383-1395
Number of pages13
JournalIEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy
Volume13
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jul 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2010-2012 IEEE.

NREL Publication Number

  • NREL/JA-6A40-82364

Keywords

  • Hierarchical control system
  • power system operation
  • regulation reserve
  • solar power plant

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Hierarchical Control of Utility-Scale Solar PV Plants for Mitigation of Generation Variability and Ancillary Service Provision'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this