Hydrogen production from offshore wind power in South China

Wind power hydrogen production is the direct conversion of electricity generated by wind power into hydrogen through water electrolysis hydrogen production equipment, which produces hydrogen for convenient long-term storage through water electrolysis. With the development of offshore wind power from offshore projects, construction costs continue to rise. Turning power transmission into hydrogen transmission will help reduce the cost of offshore wind power construction. This paper analyses the methods of producing hydrogen from offshore wind power, including alkaline water electrolysis, proton exchange membrane electrolysis of water, and solid oxide electrolysis of water. In addition, this paper outlines economic and cost analyses of hydrogen production from offshore wind power. In the future, with the development and advancement of water electrolysis hydrogen production technology, hydrogen production from offshore wind power could be more economical and practical.     

The effect of spatial dispersion of wind power plants on the curtailment of wind power in the Greek power supply system

To meet the national target of 29% for electricity production from renewable energy sources by 2020 in Greece, effective implementation of massive wind power installed capacity into the power supply system is required. In such a situation, the effective absorption of wind energy production is an important issue in a relatively small and weak power system such as that of Greece, which has limited existing interconnections with neighboring countries. The curtailment of wind power is sometimes necessary in autonomous systems with large wind energy penetration. The absorption or curtailment of wind power is strongly affected by the spatial dispersion of wind power installations. In the present paper, a methodology for estimating this effect is presented and applied for the power supply system of Greece. The method is based on probability theory, and makes use of wind forecasting models to represent the wind energy potential over any candidate area for future wind farm installations in the country. Moreover, technical constraints imposed by the power supply system management, the commitment of power plants and the load dispatch strategies are taken into account to maximize the wind energy penetration levels while ensuring reliable operation of the system. Representative wind power development scenarios are studied and evaluated. Results show that the spatial dispersion of wind power plants contributes beneficially to the wind energy penetration levels that can be accepted by the power system. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Wind farm—A power source in future power systems

The paper describes modern wind power systems, introduces the issues of large penetration of wind power into power systems, and discusses the possible methods of making wind turbines/farms act as a power source, like conventional power plants in power systems. Firstly, the paper describes modern wind turbines and wind farms, and then introduces the wind power development and wind farms. An optimization platform for designing electrical systems of offshore wind farms is briefed. The major issues related to the grid connection requirements and the operation of wind turbines/farms in power systems are illustrated.     

Using nacelle‐based wind speed observations to improve power curve modeling for wind power forecasting

Wind power forecasting for projection times of 0–48 h can have a particular value in facilitating the integration of wind power into power systems. Accurate observations of the wind speed received by wind turbines are important inputs for some of the most useful methods for making such forecasts. In particular, they are used to derive power curves relating wind speeds to wind power production. By using power curve modeling, this paper compares two types of wind speed observations typically available at wind farms: the wind speed and wind direction measurements at the nacelles of the wind turbines and those at one or more on‐site meteorological masts (met masts). For the three Australian wind farms studied in this project, the results favor the nacelle‐based observations despite the inherent interference from the nacelle and the blades and despite calibration corrections to the met mast observations. This trend was found to be stronger for wind farm sites with more complex terrain. In addition, a numerical weather prediction (NWP) system was used to show that, for the wind farms studied, smaller single time‐series forecast errors can be achieved with the average wind speed from the nacelle‐based observations. This suggests that the nacelle‐average observations are more representative of the wind behavior predicted by an NWP system than the met mast observations. Also, when using an NWP system to predict wind farm power production, it suggests the use of a wind farm power curve based on nacelle‐average observations instead of met mast observations. Further, it suggests that historical and real‐time nacelle‐average observations should be calculated for large wind farms and used in wind power forecasting. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Wind plant integration [wind power plants]

This paper discusses the key issues that confront power system planners and operators when integrating wind power plants into the electric power system. A key question is how the variations in wind plant outputs affect the operation of the power system on a daily basis and what the associated costs are. These costs are lower than initially expected by some utility engineers. The main reason for this is that wind tends to behave more like negative load than traditional firm-block generation, and the power system has been designed to handle significant load variations on a routine basis. This paper summarizes the key results of wind integration studies conducted to date and provides insights from individual studies. The studies present simulations of system operations that employ well-established production-costing and unit-commitment computational tools.     

风电场的稳定问题

介绍了大型风电场的并网技术;指出了依据风电场的容量大小,其接入电网的电压等级也有所不同;在对风电系统的稳定性进行定位的基础上,通过对国内外包含风电场的电力系统的研究成果的对比分析,展现了不同类型的风电机组在电力系统暂态过程中的行为特性,为从事风电研究的科技工作者提供参考.     

On the wind power rejection in the islands of Crete and Rhodes

Crete and Rhodes represent the two biggest isolated power systems in Greece. The energy production in both islands is based on thermal power plants. The annual wind energy rejection percentage is calculated for Crete and Rhodes in this paper. The rejected wind energy is defined as the electric energy produced by the wind turbines and not absorbed by the utility network, mainly due to power production system's stability and dynamic security reasons. A parametric calculation of the annual wind energy rejection percentage, in terms of the installed wind power, the power demand and the maximum allowed wind power instant penetration percentage, is accomplished. The methodology takes into account (i) the wind power penetration probability, restricted by the thermal generators technical minima and the maximum allowed wind power instant penetration percentage over the instant power demand; and (ii) the wind power production probability, derived by the islands' wind potential. The present paper indicates that isolated power systems which are based on thermal power plants have a limited wind power installation capacity—in order to achieve and maintain an adequate level of system stability. For a maximum wind power instant penetration percentage of 30% of the power demand, in order to ensure an annual wind energy rejection percentage less than 10%, the total installed wind power should not exceed the 40% of the mean annual power demand. The results of this paper are applicable to medium and great size isolated power systems, with particular features: (i) the power production is based on thermal power plants; (ii) the power demand exhibits intensive seasonal variations and is uncorrelated to the wind data; (iii) the mean annual power demand is greater than 10MW; and (iv) a high wind potential, presenting mean annual wind velocity values greater than 7·5ms^?1, is recorded. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley &Sons, Ltd.     

Forecasting wind power quantiles using conditional kernel estimation

The efficient management of wind farms and electricity systems benefit greatly from accurate wind power quantile forecasts. For example, when a wind power producer offers power to the market for a future period, the optimal bid is a quantile of the wind power density. An approach based on conditional kernel density (CKD) estimation has previously been used to produce wind power density forecasts. The approach is appealing because: it makes no distributional assumption for wind power; it captures the uncertainty in forecasts of wind velocity; it imposes no assumption for the relationship between wind power and wind velocity; and it allows more weight to be put on more recent observations. In this paper, we adapt this approach. As we do not require an estimate of the entire wind power density, our new proposal is to optimise the CKD-based approach specifically towards estimation of the desired quantile, using the quantile regression objective function. Using data from three European wind farms, we obtained encouraging results for this new approach. We also achieved good results with a previously proposed method of constructing a wind power quantile as the sum of a point forecast and a forecast error quantile estimated using quantile regression.     

Review of wind power tariff policies in China

In the past 20 years, China has paid significant attention to wind power. Onshore wind power in China has experienced tremendous growth since 2005, and offshore wind power development has been on-going since 2009. In 2010, with a total installed wind power capacity of 41.8 GW, China surpassed the U.S. as the country with the biggest wind power capacity in the world. By comparing the wind power situations of three typical countries, Germany, Spain, and Denmark, this paper provides a comprehensive evaluation and insights into the prospects of China’s wind power development. The analysis is carried out in four aspects including technology, wind resources, administration and time/space frame. We conclude that both German and Spanish have been growing rapidly in onshore capacity since policy improvements were made. In Denmark, large financial subsidies flow to foreign markets with power exports, creating inverse cost-benefit ratios. Incentives are in place for German and Danish offshore wind power, while China will have to remove institutional barriers to enable a leap in wind power development. In China, cross-subsidies are provided from thermal power (coal-fired power generation) in order to limit thermal power while encouraging wind power. However, the mass installation of wind power capacity completely relies on power subsidies. Furthermore, our study illustrates that capacity growth should not be the only consideration for wind power development. It is more important to do a comprehensive evaluation of multi-sectorial efforts in order to achieve long-term development.     

Impact of hourly wind power variations on the system operation in the Nordic countries

The variations of wind power production will increase the flexibility needed in the system when significant amounts of load are covered by wind power. When studying the incremental effects that varying wind power production imposes on the power system, it is important to study the system as a whole: only the net imbalances have to be balanced by the system. Large geographical spreading of wind power will reduce variability, increase predictability and decrease the occasions with near zero or peak output. The goal of this work was to estimate the increase in hourly load‐following reserve requirements based on real wind power production and synchronous hourly load data in the four Nordic countries. The result is an increasing effect on reserve requirements with increasing wind power penetration. At a 10% penetration level (wind power production of gross demand) this is estimated as 1·5%–4% of installed wind capacity, taking into account that load variations are more predictable than wind power variations. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Focus on the development of offshore wind power in China: Has the golden period come?

In recent years, Chinese Government paid more attention to the exploitation of offshore wind power, and it became an important trend in the development of wind power industry. However, the development of offshore wind power in China was still in the initial stage. Compared with land-based wind power, the development of off-shore wind power had not only weaknesses and uncertainties, but also strengths and opportunities. In order to research the development of offshore wind power, this paper summarized the aspects on policy, market, technology and development planning of offshore wind power in China, and then adopted SWOT method to analyze the influencing factors, which impact on the development of China's offshore wind power. At last, this article analyzed the internal and external factors that affect the golden period of offshore wind power development, and drew a conclusion that the golden period of offshore wind power in China will come in the future, and most likely around 2020.     

Considerations on the backup of wind power: Operational backup

The introduction of wind power into an electricity-generation system on a large scale brings about challenges for the evolution and operation of this system: backup for wind power becomes a necessity. This paper defines various elements that come into play when considering backup for electricity generation from wind power. The backup is split up in capacity backup and operational backup. The focus is set on the short-term, operational aspects of the backup provision. The effects of several short-term operation related parameters are defined and analysed. Most relevant parameters for the operation and needs for wind power backup are the load profiles, the wind power output profiles and the total amount of installed wind power. These are analysed by means of a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model through two different methods for operational backup provision, comparing the incremental cost, generated by both methods. The first method applies wind power backup through a 100% provision of additional spinning reserves. The second method does not foresee any spinning reserve and relies on the balancing by the Transmission System Operator (TSO). Both methods result in different additional charges that are being affected by the said parameters. Both the wind profile and the total amount of installed wind power are positively related to the relative cost increase. The load profile is negatively correlated to this increase. The relationship between these parameters and the development of the incremental cost provides an understanding that allows finding better equilibria in the operational backup of wind power.     

Analysis of the damping contribution of power system stabilizers driving wind power plants

Recently, the concept of wind power plant has been introduced as a result of the increment of wind power penetration in power systems. A wind power plant can be defined as a wind farm, which is expected to behave similar to a conventional power plant in terms of power generation, control and ancillary services. Transmission system operators are requiring wind power generation to help to power system with some ancillary services such as fault ride through or power system stabilizer capability. Therefore, it is important to study the power system stabilizer capability of wind power plants. In this paper, a comparison of various power system stabilizer schemes is presented. The effect of the distance from the tie line to the wind farm on the controller response and the influence of wind power plants proximity to synchronous generators are also evaluated. These studies show that wind power plants have promising power system stabilizer capability even using local input signals. However, the location of the wind power plant on the power system is a critical factor. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effect of the generation mix on wind power introduction

The specific needs and ensuing costs for wind power integration into electricity generation systems depend to a large extent on the operation, composition and behaviour of the electricity generation system. The differences in the considered systems greatly influence the outcomes regarding wind power integration. The generation mix is studied here. Analyses are performed using a mixed integer linear programming model so as to get more insight in the consequences of the design and operation of electricity generation systems including wind power by looking at three distinct case systems. The model takes into account a multitude of technical specificities of the operation of an electricity generation system. The results show several aspects that are strongly related to the composition of electricity generation systems that influence the integration of wind power in the systems. These aspects range from the composition of the system to more specific technical parameters of the power plants and their operation, such as the marginal power plant and the greenhouse gas emission levels. The results shed some light on the reasons for the divergence in wind power integration studies. Moreover, it can help in gaining insights in the future development of electricity generation systems where wind power is being introduced.     

Environmental/economic power dispatch with wind power

Economic environmental dispatch (EED) is a significant optimization problem in electric power system. With more wide spread use of wind power, it is necessary to include wind energy conversion system (WECS) in the EED problem. This paper presents a model to solve the EED problem incorporating wind power. In addition to the classic EED factors, the factors accounting for overestimation and underestimation of available wind power in both economic and environmental aspects are also considered. In order to obtain some quantitative results, the uncertain characteristic of available wind power and the performance of WECS are determined on the basis of the statistical characteristic of wind speed. The optimization problem is numerically solved by a scenario involving two conventional generators and two wind-powered generators. The results demonstrate that the allocation of system generation capacity may be influenced by multipliers related to the cost for overestimation and underestimation of available wind power, and by the multiplier related to the emissions for underestimation of available wind power. Nevertheless, the multiplier related to the emissions for overestimation of available wind power has little impact on the allocation. Taking account of economic factors, environmental factors and impacts of wind power penetration, the proposed EED model is beneficial to finding the right balance between radical and conservative strategy for wind power development.     

Output power control for large wind power penetration in small power system

Nowadays, wind turbine generator (WTG) is increasingly required to provide control capabilities regarding output power. Under this scenario, this paper proposes an output power control of WTG using pitch angle control connected to small power systems. By means of the proposed method, output power control of WTG considering states of power system becomes possible, and in general both conflicting objectives of output power leveling and acquisition power increase are achieved. In this control approach, WTG is given output power command by fuzzy reasoning which has three inputs for average wind speed, variance of wind speed, and absolute average of frequency deviation. Since fuzzy reasoning is used, it is possible to define output power command corresponding to wind speed condition and changing capacity of power system momentarily. Moreover, high performance pitch angle control based on output power command is achieved by generalized predictive control (GPC). The simulation results by using actual detailed model for wind power system show the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

风力发电系统中组合风速的建模及仿真

在实验室进行风力发电系统模拟,风速模拟是其中重要的一个环节,正确的风速模型不仅可以反应风速实际变化情况,而且能给风力发电系统的模拟研究提供准确的参数。文章采用4分量组合风速模型,用Matlab/Simulink对组合风速进行建模仿真。仿真结果表明,该数学模型能够较精确地反映风速的实际突变性、渐变性及随机性等特点,适用于风力发电系统的模拟研究工作。     

A review on the forecasting of wind speed and generated power

In the world, wind power is rapidly becoming a generation technology of significance. Unpredictability and variability of wind power generation is one of the fundamental difficulties faced by power system operators. Good forecasting tools are urgent needed under the relevant issues associated with the integration of wind energy into the power system. This paper gives a bibliographical survey on the general background of research and developments in the fields of wind speed and wind power forecasting. Based on the assessment of wind power forecasting models, further direction for additional research and application is proposed.     

Impact of wind power forecasting error bias on the economic operation of autonomous power systems

Many efforts have been presented in the literature for wind power forecasting in power systems and few of them have been used for autonomous power systems. In addition, some recent studies have evaluated the impact on the operation of power systems and energy markets that the improvement of wind power forecasting can have. In this paper, the value of the information provided to the operators of autonomous power systems about forecasting errors is studied. This information may vary significantly, e.g. it can be only the normalized mean absolute error of the forecast, or a probability density function of the errors for various levels of forecasted wind power, which can be provided either during the evaluation phase of the wind power forecasting tool or by online uncertainty estimators. This paper studies the impact of the level of detail provided about wind power forecasting accuracy for various levels of load and wind power production. The proposed analysis, when applied to the autonomous power system of Crete, shows significant changes among the various levels of information provided, not only in the operating cost but also in the wind power curtailment. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Spatial and temporal characteristics of wind and wind power off the coasts of Brittany

The main objective of this paper is to thoroughly examine the remotely sensed wind characteristics around the coasts of Brittany as well as some more specific areas. The offshore wind power potential is then assessed. To achieve this objective, information on wind speed and direction with sufficient spatial and temporal sampling under all weather conditions and during day and night is required. This study uses more than 12 years (December 1999–December 2012) of consistent remotely sensed data retrieved from the ASCAT and QuikSCAT scatterometers to estimate the conventional moments and associated wind distribution parameters. The latter are comparable to wind observations from meteorological stations. Furthermore, combining in-situ and scatterometer wind information enables an improved assessment of the spatial and temporal wind structures at specific locations of interest to be made. The wind statistical results are used to study the spatial and temporal patterns of the wind power. Although the main parameters characterizing wind power potential such as mean, variability, maximum energy, wind speed and intra-annual exhibit seasonal features, significant inter-annual variability is also depicted. Furthermore, differences are found between the wind power estimated for northern and for southern Brittany.