Augmenting System Inertia Through Fast Acting Reserve – A Power System Case Study with High Penetration of Wind Power

A number of jurisdictions across the world are committed to reducing their carbon emissions. A key route to decarbonisation is by raising the share of renewable generation. However, this will result in reduction of the system inertia and consequently deterioration of frequency stability. Fast acting reserve (FAR) is seen as a possible solution. Various approaches concerning the control of FAR (e.g. frequency gradient and frequency deviation based triggering) have previously been proposed. There is however a lack of clarity regarding the volume of FAR that can potentially compensates for reduction in system inertia. This paper carries out a quantitative assessment of FAR to limit the rate of change of frequency. All island power system of Ireland is adopted as a test case for analysis. The study concludes that FAR can mitigate the RoCoF and it presents also the quantitative relationship between FAR and conventional inertia which depends on system conditions.