Estimating energy imbalance due to integration of wind power

As demand for clean renewable sources of energy continues to grow, utilities will increasingly rely on wind power to fit that demand. This paper presents a Wind Energy Imbalance Estimation Technique (WEIET). The WEIET estimates the impact on the system energy imbalance from integrating new wind generating facilities. The area control error (ACE) is used in the WEIET to account for the imbalance of the load as well as other system components. The method relies on known and calculable quantities derived from the ACE equation taking into account the additional automatic generation control (AGC) response to the wind schedule/actual mismatch. In its simplest form, this method provides the worst case scenario of the impact on the system reliability metrics from additional wind facilities. This simplest form is easily implementable on all systems. More comprehensive analysis can be performed by expanding on the simplest form. Simulation results on a northwest utility system verify that the proposed technique predicts the impact of integrating an actual wind facility into the balancing area.