Risk‐based optimal distribution of power reserves in wind power plants

Abstract

This paper employs the Conditional Value-at Risk, largely used in financial risk management, to specify the power reserve capacity of a wind power plant (WPP) under a risk metric. Evidences are shown here that other popular, simpler measure, the Value-at Risk, is inappropriate for that specification. Under this risk-based reserve metric, two programs are approached to optimally distribute a reserve request in a WPP subject to a given confidence level in the commitment. The most exhaustive of the two is a two-level formulation including a solution to the load power flow (LPF) in the WPP. By solving these two programs, for comparison with interior-point and heuristic solvers, conclusions are drawn. Notably, that a Pareto optimality occurs for stringent reserve requests; that putting off-line generators is financially more profitable than partial curtailments to respond to low reserve requests; and that in these cases accounting for losses through LPF-based optimization seems unnecessary.