Alternatives No More: Wind and Solar Power Are Mainstays of a Clean, Reliable, Affordable Grid

Milligan, Michael; Frew, Bethany; Kirby, Brendan; Schuerger, M.; Clark, K.; Lew, D.; Denholm, Paul; Zavadil, Bob; O’Malley, Mark; Tsuchida, Bruce

doi:10.1109/mpe.2015.2462311

Cited by 66 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…The inverters of wind, solar and batteries already provide reactive power for voltage control and can provide the other ancillary services, including virtual or synthetic inertia, by programming the functionality into the inverter software [146]. Inverters are much more flexible than mechanics-bound synchronous generators and can change their output with high accuracy within milliseconds [147]. The reason that wind and solar plants have only recently been providing these services is that before (i.e.…”

Section: Their Feasibility Criterion 4: Ancillary Servicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Response to ‘Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems’

Brown

Bischof-Niemz

Blok

et al. 2018

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews

412

220

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A recent article 'Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems' claims that many studies of 100% renewable electricity systems do not demonstrate sufficient technical feasibility, according to the criteria of the article's authors (henceforth 'the authors'). Here we analyse the authors' methodology and find it problematic. The feasibility criteria chosen by the authors are important, but are also easily addressed at low economic cost, while not affecting the main conclusions of the reviewed studies and certainly not affecting their technical feasibility. A more thorough review reveals that all of the issues have already been addressed in the engineering and modelling literature. Nuclear power, which the authors have evaluated positively elsewhere, faces other, genuine feasibility problems, such as the finiteness of uranium resources and a reliance on unproven technologies in the medium-to long-term. Energy systems based on renewables, on the other hand, are not only feasible, but already economically viable and decreasing in cost every year.

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Section: Their Feasibility Criterion 4: Ancillary Servicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Response to ‘Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems’

Brown

Bischof-Niemz

Blok

et al. 2018

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews

412

220

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Remark 1: In this model, we have assumed that the frequency ω i enters without noise in the system dynamics (2). While this is meaningful in a setting with synchronous machines, a power electronic inverter interfacing, e.g., a renewable generation source, may emulate the swing equation using a noisy measurement of the frequency.…”

Section: Noise Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many of today's electric power networks are undergoing a paradigm shift, where local, small-scale generation resources are increasingly replacing large-scale centralized power plants [1], [2]. This has motivated considerable research efforts in developing more flexible and scalable distributed schemes for generation planning and frequency control.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Performance Limitations of Distributed Integral Control in Power Networks Under Noisy Measurements

Flamme

Tegling

2018

2018 Annual American Control Conference (ACC)

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Distributed approaches to secondary frequency control have become a way to address the need for more flexible control schemes in power networks with increasingly distributed generation. The distributed averaging proportionalintegral (DAPI) controller presents one such approach. In this paper, we analyze the transient performance of this controller, and specifically address the question of its performance under noisy frequency measurements. Performance is analyzed in terms of an H2 norm metric that quantifies power losses incurred in the synchronization transient. While previous studies have shown that the DAPI controller performs well, in particular in sparse networks and compared to a centralized averaging PI (CAPI) controller, our results prove that additive measurement noise may have a significant negative impact on its performance and scalability. This impact is shown to decrease with an increased inter-nodal alignment of the controllers' integral states, either through increased gains or increased connectivity. For very large and sparse networks, however, the requirement for inter-nodal alignment is so large that a CAPI approach may be preferable. Overall, our results show that distributed secondary frequency control through DAPI is possible and may perform well also under noisy measurements, but requires careful tuning.

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“…These modes are displayed in Fig 1. One concludes that, with a non-weighted vulnerability measure, η b ≡ 1 in (50), an homogeneous inertia location is a local optimum for V, for which damping parameters need to be increased primarily on peripheral buses. (2) (3) (4)…”

Section: )mentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimal Placement of Inertia and Primary Control: A Matrix Perturbation Theory Approach

Pagnier

Jacquod

2019

IEEE Access

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The increasing penetration of inertialess new renewable energy sources reduces the overall mechanical inertia available in power grids and accordingly raises a number of issues of grid stability over short to medium time scales. It has been suggested that this reduction of overall inertia can be compensated to some extent by the deployment of substitution inertia -synthetic inertia, flywheels or synchronous condensers. Of particular importance is to optimize the placement of the limited available substitution inertia, to mitigate voltage angle and frequency disturbances following a fault such as an abrupt power loss. Performance measures in the form of H2−norms have been recently introduced to evaluate the overall magnitude of such disturbances on an electric power grid. However, despite the mathematical conveniance of these measures, analytical results can be obtained only under rather restrictive assumptions of uniform damping ratio, or homogeneous distribution of inertia and/or primary control in the system. Here, we introduce matrix perturbation theory to obtain analytical results for optimal inertia and primary control placement where both are heterogeneous. Armed with that efficient tool, we construct two simple algorithms that independently determine the optimal geographical distribution of inertia and primary control. These algorithms are then implemented on a model of the synchronous transmission grid of continental Europe. We find that the optimal distribution of inertia is geographically homogeneous but that primary control should be mainly located on the slow modes of the network, where the intrinsic grid dynamics takes more time to damp frequency disturbances.

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Alternatives No More: Wind and Solar Power Are Mainstays of a Clean, Reliable, Affordable Grid

Cited by 66 publications

References 2 publications

Response to ‘Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems’

Response to ‘Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems’

Performance Limitations of Distributed Integral Control in Power Networks Under Noisy Measurements

Optimal Placement of Inertia and Primary Control: A Matrix Perturbation Theory Approach

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