Renewable Energy 36 (2011) 1671e1677

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Renewable Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/renene

Review

Review of contribution to frequency control through variable speed wind turbineq

Xue Yingcheng*, Tai Nengling
Electrical Engineering Department, Shanghai Jiaotong University, DongChuan Load 800, Shanghai 200030, China

a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history: Received 19 August 2010 Accepted 5 November 2010 Available online 3 December 2010 Keywords: Ancillary services Frequency response Emulating inertia Primary frequency control Wind turbines

a b s t r a c t
The increasing wind penetration in todays power grids has led to growing interest in the frequency control capabilities of wind generation. Several publications have proposed a variety of methods both on the levels of a single turbine and of a wind farm. This paper focuses on the role of wind generation in a systems primary frequency control. Wind turbine control methods that enable frequency support and control are presented. The advantages and disadvantages of each method are discussed. Crown Copyright 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction In recent years, there have been problems such as exhaustion of fossil fuel, e.g., coal and oil, and environmental pollution. In order to overcome these problems, renewable energy sources (RES) can be installed for the reduction of greenhouse gases as well as granting signicant side benets and contributing to economic growth. Among available RES technologies, wind power is expected to contribute the largest portion. during the last decades, Many large wind farms have already been installed so far and recently huge offshore wind farms have also been integrated in the power networks. But with the ever increasing development of wind power, the impacts on grid frequency and operation of the power system become more signicant. First of all, as the wind penetration in a system increases, the randomness and uctuation of wind power increase. The frequency variation of power system due to wind generator output uctuations increases. Frequency variations will change the operation point of wind turbines due to the change of value of the machine reactance and the slip. Generally, wind parks are equipped with a frequency relay that disconnects the wind park after a frequency disturbance. When the wind power penetration of a grid is high, a massive wind farms disconnection can lead to power system oscillations [1].
q Project supported by the Shanghai Phosphor Science Foundation, China (07SG11); New Century Excellent Talents in University, China (NCET-08-0356). * Corresponding author. Tel.: 86 (0)515 88322576. E-mail address: Xyc_xyc_xyc@126.com (X. Yingcheng).

Secondly, modern wind farms are mostly equipped with Variable Speed Wind Turbines (VSWT), variable speed turbine technologies use back-to-back power electronic converters for the grid connexion. The intermediate DC voltage bus creates an electrical decoupling between the machine and the grid. Therefore variations in grid frequency are not seen by the generator rotor, the power system apparent inertia decreases as the wind penetration in a system increases. Consequently greater rates of frequency change will be observed in various system contingencies (e.g. generating unit loss) or sudden load variations. This implies that the spinning reserve will have less time to react to the power imbalance, probably resulting in larger frequency deviations. This effect is mainly noticeable in frequency deviations occurring in small or isolated systems with an important penetration of wind power [2]. Additionally the increase in the rate of frequency change will lead to additional regulation burden on conventional units. And there is also the more common case where, due to power system stability issues, wind generation is partially curtailed. Thirdly, Due to the uncertain characteristics of the wind production, the general way of the reserve management for wind integration is to provide additional reserve margin by conventional plants. Such a strategy could not only increase the operating cost but also impose additional unit stress during the frequency event. If wind generation is displacing thermal plant then the sources of reserve available to the system will decline and fewer conventional units will be available to share the operating reserve burden. Therefore, as the wind penetration in a system increases, reserve management by the conventional plants, that is, hydraulic and thermal power stations, will be difcult in the near future,

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especially in an isolated power system like a small island which has weak capability of power regulation. In order to achieve a more secure operation, reduce the impact of the wind penetration, wind Turbine generation (WTG) should be more grid-friendly, WTG has to contribute with services that are normally delivered by conventional power plants. Sooner or later, the large wind farms will have to behave as active controllable components in the power system [3]. This means that wind farms will be able to share some of the duties carried out today by the conventional power plants, such as regulating active and reactive power and performing frequency and voltage control on the grid. Therefore, the need to study the way in which wind units could participate in system frequency support strongly arises. This paper focuses on the participation of a wind turbine to the primary frequency control. Wind turbine control methods that enable frequency support and control are presented. The advantages and disadvantages of each method are discussed. The possibility of using variable speed wind turbine to provide primary power reserve is investigated. The capacity of a variable speed wind generator to maintain a primary power reserve without direct wind speed measurement nor additional storage system is discussed. This paper is structured as following. Section II introduces national Grid Codes about frequency and active power requirements for wind farms, Section III compares the frequency Response of VSWT and conventional plant. Section IV describes Methods to enable variable speed wind turbine primary regulation. Finally, conclusions and future work are given in Section VI. 2. National grid codes about frequency and active power requirements for wind farms In recent years, the various national Grid Codes have imposed some frequency and active power requirements on wind farms. For example The Great Britain (GB) Grid Code states that wind farms must provide balancing services that are originally supported from conventional plants, all wind farms must be capable of meeting the frequency response requirements of primary, secondary and highfrequency response [3]. When the frequency drops, say a frequency deviation of 0.5 Hz, the generator output power should increase by an amount equal to primary response, within the time period 0e10 s and be sustained for a further 20 s. The generators should maintain power output at the secondary response from 30 s to 30 min in order to stabilize the frequency. In the event of a frequency increase, the generator output power should decrease by an amount equal to high-frequency response within the time period 0e10 s. Hydro-Quebec grid code states that wind farms with rated power greater than 10 MW must have frequency control system that helps to reduce large (>0.5 Hz) and short-term (<10 s) frequency deviations in power systems [4]. According to the Danish Grid Code [5], it is required to control the output power of individual wind generators using an automatic frequency regulation controller. The transmission system operator (TSO) may demand primary response from 47 to 50 Hz and highfrequency response from 50 to 53 Hz with a headband of 49.9e50.1 Hz. The German Grid Code [6] requires wind farms to reduce their available power production when the network frequency is higher than normal values. Generating plant with a rated capacity less than 100 MW can provide primary response by an agreement with the transmission system operator (TSO). The Grid Code states that given a frequency deviation of 0.2 Hz, the primary response of the generating plant should be able to change by 2% of the rated power output evenly in 30 s and be maintained for at least 15 min. If the frequency rises to a value more than 50.5 Hz, the TSO can demand a reduction of the active power.

In Spain, there are plans to implement in a new operative procedure strengthen requirements for the power and frequency control contribution from wind generators. This includes the participation in the power and frequency control schemes and in addition requirements for inertia provision by emulation from wind energy converters [7]. 3. Comparison of the frequency response of VSWT and conventional plant Conventional generating plants use directly connected synchronous generators. This means that there is a coupling between the power system frequency and the electromagnetic torque (and the resulting electrical active power output) of the generators. When the power system frequency suddenly decreases the electrical active power suddenlydand temporarilydincreases due to this coupling. This is known as the natural inertial response of the generator, and it contributes to frequency stabilization. Classical VSWTs are characterized by lower inertia than classical power plants. Further, some VSWTs technologies use back-to-back power electronic converters for the grid connexion. The intermediate DC voltage bus creates an electrical decoupling between the machine and the grid. Therefore although wind turbines also have a signicant amount of kinetic energy stored in the rotating mass of their blades Similar to conventional generators. This energy will not contribute to the inertia of the grid as the rotational speed is decoupled from the grid frequency by a power electronic converter. However through the addition of a control loop, variable speed wind turbines can make the hidden inertia available to the grid. In this way, variable speed wind turbines may be congured to emulate an inertial response similar to that of synchronous generation. In fact, modern wind turbine generators (WTGs) have inertia constants which are comparable to those of conventional turbinealternators, In addition VSWTs can operate in a wide range of speed changes, The generator speed can drop to as low as 0.7 pu speed, while conventional unit speed can only drop to as low as 0.95 pu speed, therefore from two installations of the same rating and the same H, the variable speed wind turbines would have 4.12 times more kinetic energy than the conventional installation. This kinetic energy could be utilized to provide temporary primary frequency control support to the grid in the event of a load/generation mismatch. However, the power is limited by the operating conditions and the power rating of the VSWT. Wind Turbines will normally operate to maximize their power output under all possible conditions. Hence they are not available to provide a sustained increase in power output and therefore participate in secondary response services which conventional plants are able to do. However they can provide the two components of inertia and governor responses, which are present in primary response from existing synchronous plant as outlined below. An important feature of VSWTs is the possibility for their active and reactive power outputs to be controlled as required by system operators. They can increase their output power almost instantaneously. This is an important feature, although the steady-state active power delivered to the grid by a VSWT depends on the mechanical energy transferred from the wind, the electric power can be transiently controlled, to a certain extent, by resorting to the mechanical system kinetic energy. This is due to the capability of these machines to work at a synchronous speed. Ref. [8] Compares Frequency Response characteristics of Conventional Power Plant with Wind Power Plant by increasing the load of the power system, the conventional power plant acquire time (Response and Settling time of Mechanical power of Hydro, Thermal and Steam unit take 04e25 s and 20e68 s respectively to stabilize the system) to supply the demand power in order to

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balance the entire system. While the Response and Settling time of Electrical Power of the wind turbine are 03 se09 s and 08 se38 s respectively. Therefore, during this transition time power to the system can be supplied from the wind turbine to meet the raised power and to stabilize the frequency. Ref. [9] States that the initial power surge of a hydro turbine is opposite to that desired. The initial opposite power surge lasts for 1e2 s depending on the water starting time and the load step. Because of this phenomenon, during a generation decit situation, the decelerating power (energy) is higher for a hydro turbine compared to that of a steam turbine with/without the reheat. Due to these reasons, a fast short-term active power support from the wind turbine could be benecial for a hydro dominated system in arresting the initial frequency fall, which corresponds to an improvement in the system temporary minimum frequency. Refs. [10,11] Quanties the capability of providing a short-term excess active power support of a commercial multi-megawatt variable speed wind turbine (VSWT), a GE 3.6 MW model was used, It was found that the WTG can provide an extra 0.1 pu of active power for more than 10 s quite easily without hitting the minimum speed limit, which is twice the Hydro-Qubec requirement. Ref. [12] Studies the behavior and capability of VSWT for providing temporary active power overproduction. A 2 MW VSWT-DFIG was investigated. It was found that it is possible to have an active power overproduction of 0.2 pu for at least 10 s, which could be useful for the grid operator for restoring a critical situation of grid frequency dip, especially in power systems with slow primary movers response or low inertia. 4. Method to enable variable speed wind turbine primary regulation To solve the problems mentioned above, many experts and scholars have been doing a large amount of research. There are three Methods to allows variable speed wind turbine to participate effectively in system frequency regulation, the rst is Inertial Control Method, the second is power reserve Control Method, the third is the other method such as communication method etc. 4.1. Inertial control Recently some literatures proposed methods to meet inertial response of VSWT. Most of these methods introduce a supplementary loop into active power control loop. The loop is activated during frequency deviations. It tries to reduce imbalance between demand and generation by injecting more power from wind turbine to grid until governor increase mechanical power of conventional plant. Inertial Control may be classied into two categories. Those are, on one hand, control methods that attempt to create an articial wind turbine inertial response, and on the other hand, control methods that utilize a droop characteristic. The rst control strategy has been proposed in [13]. Basically, it gives the wind turbine a response to frequency deviations that is equal to the inherent behaviour of a synchronous machine. The additional amount of power supplied is proportional to the derivative of the frequency. (It will be called articial inertia control). The second control strategy implements on the wind turbine the primary frequency control that is used by conventional power plants. The amount of power supplied is proportional to the difference between the measured and the nominal frequency. It will be called droop control. In Ref. [14] methods combining the two control strategy to provide inertial response for wind turbines are suggested. Auxiliary control signal proportional to the frequency deviation and frequency deviation derivative are used in order to increase the power of the wind turbine.

This auxiliary signal is given by

Dpref kdf

dDf kpf Df dt

(1)

where kdf is a constant weighting the frequency deviation derivative while kpf weights the frequency deviation itself. kdf is equal to the term 2H, H is the total extra virtual inertia constant of the wind turbine [15]. Special attention must be given to the frequency proportional term kpf. For positive values of kpf, the original damping term is increased. Therefore, large positive values provide a better frequency oscillation damping. When applying this strategy, the frequency deviation is behind a high-pass lter, so that a permanent frequency deviation has no effect on the control strategy. A low-pass lter must be connected to the frequency differentiator so that frequency measurement noise does not cause problems. Fig. 4 depicts the simplied lay out of the inertial control [16]. In Fig. 1, The inertial control loop is responsible for sending additional power regulation signal DPref to the rotor side converter controller (assuming the converters can provide/withstand the necessary rotor current). When system frequency changes, not only do the synchronous generators respond to this change, the wind plant the inertial control loop also sends additional active power DPref to the VSWT active power reference Pref. and quickly changes its output active power to share in the frequency restoration process during such short-term frequency uctuations. Extra power is extracted from kinetic energy stored in rotating turbine. In this way wind turbine operates like a synchronous machine. In other word it can be said that system inertia is increased virtually. With the given VSWT rotor speed, optimal power signal Poptimal is obtained and compared with measured output electrical power. The error signal is regulated by the rotor side converter controller to obtain the required rotor current Iqr. In Refs. [12,17] supplementary loop adds a constant power pulse to power reference. Recently GE provides such technology to its new products. Output power is increased about 5%e10% relative to its prefault condition [18]. The inertial response auxiliary signals can also be added to the torque control loop, as shown in Fig. 2. The rst auxiliary signal corresponding to (2) is added to the set torque (torque demand). As the system frequency drops, the set point torque is increased slowing the rotor and extracting kinetic energy.

T 2H

df dt

(2)

The second inertial response torque term is through the use of proportional control. In this method, the torque term is calculated based on the absolute deviation from the nominal system frequency. This is given as:

T kp f0 fmeasu

(3)

Fig 1. Inertial controller schematic Form power control.

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Fig 2. Inertial controller schematic Form torque control.

In (3), fo is the nominal frequency and kp is the proportional constant. This type of control is known as droop control and can be seen in Fig. 2. The droop control will allow the machine to compensate for the load imbalance based on its size. It is equivalent to the primary frequency control that is applied to conventional synchronous generators. In order to minimize the impact of this supplementary control on mechanical drive train loads, high-pass lter and low-pass lter are added after the input respectively. The inertial control have some shortcomings. First, The inertial control are related with the fact that it does not take into account the benecial characteristics of VSWT generators, such as the fast active power response and the capability to arbitrarily establish a new power output inside some feasible margins. Thus, the inertial control could mask load changes, leading conventional generators to delay their response when rejecting these perturbations. Second, the inertial control uses the kinetic energy storage system (blade and machine inertia) to participate in primary frequency control. But releasing or storing kinetic energy can only be considered as a part of primary control. Indeed, the wind persistence being limited, this power reserve cannot be guaranteed further to short-term. Third, the inertial control mentioned above did not investigate limitations of VSWT, like current and voltage rating of converters. Most inertial control methods allow a temporary overload of the machine when operating at high wind speeds [19]. This however would require generators rated for greater than nominal power and torque. In Ref. [20] a complete study by considering these limitations has been done. In addition, It should be noted that this method is only possible for variable speed wind turbines. 4.2. Power reserve control Primary regulation is the mechanism implemented by the system to compensate imbalance between demand and generation. A primary regulation consists of a linear variation of generated power with grid frequency. Accordingly, if the grid frequency increases, the generated power should decrease and vice versa. Consequently, in order to be able to implement primary regulation in both directions, a power reserve is needed. For maximization of revenue and resource utilization, Variable speed wind turbines are normally controlled to capture as much power as possible from the wind. Hence they are not available to provide a sustained increase in power output and therefore participate in secondary response services which conventional plants are able to do. The kinetic energy stored in their inertia gives the turbines the possibility to support primary frequency control for a short period. Therefore, In order to perform permanent active power control, it is generally necessary to force the wind turbine to operate in a non-optimal power point, This non-optimal operation of the wind turbine is called deloaded operation [14]. The ways to deload wind turbine may be classied into two categories. Those are, on one hand, control methods that attempt to

deload the wind turbine would be to increase the pitch angle and on the other hand, control methods that attempt to deload the wind turbine is to operate the wind turbine at increased speed. Ideally, both methods would be used simultaneously to optimise the control performance. Different ways to deload wind turbine are shown on Fig. 3. One method consists in modifying the pitch angle, while keeping the optimal rotation speed corresponding to the actual wind speed (point A on Fig. 3). Another method consists in de-optimizing the rotation speed, either by imposing a lower speed (point B) or a higher speed (as far as the nominal rotation speed is not exceeded) (point C). However, it is necessary to make sure that the rotor speed does not exceed its upper limit [21]. In order to be able to contribute with primary frequency control a generating plant should have an amount of active power reserve DPR which can be expressed through a reserve factor FR as: DPR FR$Pavi (6) Where Pavi is the maximum active power that can be delivered by the generating plant. Hence, from an operation point P0, the wind turbine will have to be able to vary the extracted power continuously in a band DP (in % on the available power Pdisp) on the power of reference Pref. Normally the upper band will coincide with the available power (Popt are on the optimal power curve), dening the following operation range:

Popt Pdisp  p0 1  pmin

(4)

Dp

 pdisp (5)

100

 Dp p 12 100 disp

(6)

A typically used value for FR is 10%. This percentage can be variable depending on the support capacity that is required. To obtain a power reserve, the WTG must operate at an operating point, which does not extract the maximum power of the wind. For instance, WTG can be required to determine a power reference value sufciently lower than rated power (balance control) or to limit power production in such a way that a specied power reserve is always available (delta control) etc. [22,23]. 4.2.1. Pitch control Pitch angle control of the wind turbine is designed much like governor control of synchronous machine in this part to make the wind power plant have a long-term frequency regulation capability. The pitch control limits the active power to a value lower than its nominal value, The resulting active power reserve can be delivered by decreasing the pitch angle as system frequency drops, so that the turbine can extract more mechanical power from wind ow.

Mechanical power(p.u)

0.35 0.3 0.25 0.2 0.15 0.1 0.05 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 B A C

Rotor speed (p.u.)

Fig 3. Strategies to release a power margin.

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As described in Fig. 4, the pitch angle is regulated as

bref b0 Db, where Db K1 (fsys fref) and fref is the steady-state

system frequency, and fsys is the measured system frequency. The VSWT droop characteristic is considered the same as that of a synchronous machine, so that while system load increased, the VSWT can share some load increase as synchronous machine. To restore system frequency to 50 Hz, the load reference should also be changed. With reference electrical power curve Pref and mechanical power curve with different pitch angles, one can get the pitch angle b0. The initial pitch angle b0 can decide how much wind power can be deloaded [24]. It should be noted that for any given wind speed there is an optimal turbine rotational speed uopt corresponding to the optimal strategy. When deloading through pitching it is desirable to maintain this optimal speed, otherwise the turbine would have to be accelerated (underspeeding case) or decelerated (overspeeding case). In the literature various methods to realize such a control method are presented. Most of them require a wind speed measurement. In Ref. [15], primary regulation is attained through pitch control. At nominal frequency, the pitch angle differs from the optimum, so that the wind power drawn is not the maximum. This way, a power reserve is available to adjust the power generated by changing the pitch angle if the frequency varies. Ref. [25] also suggests maintaining a power reserve with the help of the pitch control when the wind generator works close to rated power. 4.2.2. Speed control Another way to deload the wind turbine is to operate the wind turbine at increased speed, and select a power-rotational speed (Pu) setting different from the optimum. The method is based on varying the Pu curve as a function of the grid frequency. In order to increase the wind turbine power output the speed has to be decreased and vice versa. The stored kinetic energy is actually transferred to or from the grid. Hence regulating the power injected to the grid according to primary regulations. Fig. 5 shows the maximum available power curve Popt and the curves corresponding to 95% maximum power, This new curve may be shifted either to the right or to the left of the optimum curve Popt. The left-hand curve may yield stability problems, Consequently, the right-hand curves would be used. By working along the 95% curve, the wind turbine is forced to generate less power than the maximum power available. Hence, there is a power reserve available for primary regulation. The adoption of a power reference that uses a deloaded power extraction curve, as described in Fig. 5, allows the increase of active power generated by the wind generator when frequency decreases, as a result of a sudden load increase or loss of a large generation facility. From Fig. 6, one can see that the power reference can be dened as:

Fig 5. The 95% maximum power available curves.

pdel p1

ur1 ur0

p0 p1

ur1 ur

(7)

where p0 and p1are the maximum and deloaded active powers for a given wind speed, respectively, being ur0 and ur1 are the minimum and maximum rotor speeds referred to the generator side, respectively. Additional details concerning the deloaded optimal operating point of the variable speed wind turbine can be obtained in [26]. In the literature various methods to realize such a control method are presented. Ref. [27] proposes a control scheme that allows doubly fed induction wind generators (DFIWG) to participate effectively in system frequency regulation. In this control approach, wind generators operate according to a deloaded optimum power extraction curve such that the active power provided by each wind turbine increases or decreases during system frequency changes. The control strategy dened at the wind generator to supply primary frequency regulation capability exploits a combination of control of the static converters and pitch control, adjusting the rotor speed and the active power according to the deloaded optimum power extraction curve. In Ref. [28], a strategy for primary frequency control has been developed. The wind generator is operating according to a deloaded optimum power extraction curve in order to create a primary power reserve. This control strategy allows us to ensure a primary power reserve even when the WTG works under rated power. However this strategy requires the wind speed measurement and a detailed model of the wind turbine. One important observation concerns speed control is the maximum allowable turbine rotation speed umax, as at medium to high wind speeds the u value required for deloading purposes is often greater than umax. Consequently, as far as the control system is concerned, three wind speed regimes can be identied: a low wind speed regime where deloading is achieved through rotational speed increase, a medium wind speed regime where a coordinated use of speed control and pitching is required, and the high wind speed regime where speed control essentially degenerates into pitching.

Fig 4. pitch control schematic.

Fig 6. Schematic diagram of deloaded optimal active power curve.

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Another important observation concerns speed control when used on DFIG wind turbines. For a DFIG the percentage of the total power transferred to the grid and the power through the converter depends on the generator slip. The higher the slip is, the higher the power through the converter. Consequently when speed control at near-nominal wind speeds, a converter sized for optimum operation might not be adequate. This is another constraint that has to be taken into account in the application of this method [24]. 4.3. Other methods Apart from the methods mentioned above, there are some other methods to enable variable speed wind turbine primary regulation, such as method use communication, and the method that combine wind energy with fuel cells. Ref. [29] proposed a communication control strategy that Uses output electric power of conventional plant as VSWT reference power, so that VSWT injects an additional power, equal to DP load just after imbalanced. Output power is then decrease by suitable time constant. Ref. [14] Based on a modied inertial control scheme, takes advantage of the fast response capability associated with electronically-controlled VSWT, allowing the kinetic energy stored by rotational masses to be partly and transiently released in order to provide earlier frequency support. An additional improvement is achieved by communicating the VSWT response to conventional generators so that these can eventually take care of the full load imbalance. Ref. [30] Investigates the possibility for a permanent magnet synchronous generator based VSWT to participate in the primary frequency control without wind speed measurement nor additional storage system. A fuzzy logic supervisory is proposed to obtain a primary reserve whatever the operating points. In Ref. [31] the authors propose to associate wind generator and fuel cells. In this case the WTG ensures the frequency control during the rst instant and the fuel cells take over (the time response of the fuel cells is more important than the WTG). But in this case the fuel cells are only used to participate in the primary frequency control. 5. Conclusions and future work This paper focuses on the participation of a wind turbine to the primary frequency control. In the previous sections various methods to enable frequency control support by wind turbines have been presented, along with the main issues associated with their function and realization. The advantages and disadvantages of each method are discussed. As already mentioned standard methods to enable frequency control by wind turbines do not exist. The authors hope that this paper has contributed towards this direction. Although there appear to be several alternatives for dealing with the effects of wind generation on frequency regulation, more research is needed to determine what approach will be most effective for specic systems. There may also be a need to rethink secondary control since frequency disturbances due to wind generation tend to fall within the traditional time-scale boundary between primary and secondary control actions. A method of estimating the reserve from wind turbines, its ratio to conventional generation reserves and its economic issues has not yet been presented in the literature. This is a complex unit commitment problem, one however that will determine the extent to which frequency control by wind generation is economically viable for a power system.

In the literature various methods to establish the concept of kinetic energy discharge for the wind farm to support the system frequency are presented. Further work is required to establish the optimal timing of the kinetic energy discharge and the optimal prole of this power surge in coordination with the characteristics of conventional plants. And verify the existing simulations by laboratory based hardware simulation in future work. Finally, some other possible applications of such short-term active power supports from a wind farm are also needed to study which could be, for instance, in a small isolated system, in a thermal dominated system and for supporting system islanding operation.

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