Wind Power Impacts on Electric Power System Operating Costs: Summary and Perspective on Work to Date; Preprint

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaper

Abstract

Electric utility system planners and operators are concerned that variations in wind plant output may increase the operating costs of the system. This concern arises because the system must maintain an instantaneous balance between the aggregate demand for electric power and the total power generated by all power plants feeding the system. This is a highly sophisticated task that utilityoperators and automatic controls perform routinely, based on well-known operating characteristics for conventional power plants and a great deal of experience accumulated over many years. System operators are concerned that variations in wind plant output will force the conventional power plants to provide compensating variations to maintain system balance, thus causing the conventional powerplants to deviate from operating points chosen to minimize the total cost of operating the system. The operators' concerns are compounded by the fact that conventional power plants are generally under their control and thus are dispatchable, whereas wind plants are controlled instead by nature. Although these are valid concerns, the key issue is not whether a system with a significant amount ofwind capacity can be operated reliably, but rather to what extent the system operating costs are increased by the variability of the wind.
Original languageAmerican English
Number of pages13
StatePublished - 2004
Event2004 Global WINDPOWER Conference - Chicago, Illinois
Duration: 29 Mar 200431 Mar 2004

Conference

Conference2004 Global WINDPOWER Conference
CityChicago, Illinois
Period29/03/0431/03/04

Bibliographical note

Prepared for the 2004 Global WINDPOWER Conference, 29-31 March 2004, Chicago, Illinois

NREL Publication Number

  • NREL/CP-500-35946

Keywords

  • ancillary service costs
  • electric utilities
  • power plants
  • power systems
  • wind energy
  • wind turbine

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