Reliability Improvement of Wind Integrated Power Systems using Energy Storage & Aggregation

Wind energy is one of the fastest growing renewable energy resources in recent times. However, the variable nature of wind power negatively affects power system reliability. Reduction in wind power variability and hence improvement in power system reliability can be achieved through a number of means including aggregating geographically diverse wind, deploying energy storage systems (ESS), and using flexible loads. This paper proposes a new approach for mitigation of wind power variability by utilizing both aggregation and ESS. Although aggregation of geographically diverse wind power leads to reduced variability, the benefits are limited due to several factors, as discussed in this paper. ESS projects, on the other hand, can be significantly expensive. In this context, the proposed approach helps in overcoming the limitations of the individual methods and provides a more cost-effective solution. Composite system reliability assessment is performed using Monte Carlo simulation on the IEEE 14-bus system to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method. Results show that the application of the proposed approach helps in reducing the ESS size while improving the system reliability.