Windfarm operations: Control of windfarm power and kinetic energy discharge as fast reserve

Increase of wind power penetration leads to a reduction in regulated power production and reduction in primary reserves that support the system frequency from excessive drop during a generation outage. Starting from the control of a single wind-turbine generator (WTG), this thesis proposes two modes of operation for windfarms. (a) Normal operation, in which modern windfarms have the wherewithal to produce regulated power when the lowest windspeed can be reliably predicted an hour ahead. This capability is demonstrated by simulating a windfarm made up of 24 WTGs using a set of 10 1-hour long wind velocity data. (b) Reserve Control mode, in which windfarms would discharge kinetic energy in the spinning WTGs to support the system frequency. This windfarm reserve control can discharge a much greater amount of kinetic energy than a conventional plant of the same rating and inertia.