Recommended Practices for Wind Integration Studies

Many wind integration studies have been performed in recent years, with evolving methodologies. Since power systems and data availability vary significantly, the results and methodologies used in these studies have varied accordingly. This paper presents the main findings from the IEA WIND Recommended Practices for Wind Integration studies. An overview of a complete wind integration study is presented as a flow chart. The main simulation steps are presented with recommendations on methodologies: an increase in reserve requirements, estimating impacts on other generation and balancing, capacity value of wind power and transmission expansion due to wind power. The study set-up and the main assumptions are outlined, as they can have a critical impact on the results. The recommendations are applicable for other variable renewable sources, including photovoltaics.