Base load power plant

About: Base load power plant is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 6121 publications have been published within this topic receiving 96788 citations.

Power quality measurements performed on a low-voltage grid equipped with two wind turbines

Abstract: The power quality of a low-voltage grid with two wind turbines is investigated. Slow voltage variations as well as transients and harmonics are measured and analysed. Furthermore, the spectrum of the power is determined so that the presence of periodic power components can be investigated. Although periodic power fluctuations reaching 10% of the rated power are registered, voltage variations are lower than the prescribed IEC flicker limit at steady-state operation. As the turbines are put on-line, the voltage level is lowered by 3%, which exceeds the flicker limit. The risk for flicker increases if the X/R ratio of the grid is low and if turbines which have a tendency to produce large periodic power fluctuations are used.

Evaluating CO2 sources for power-to-gas applications – A case study for Austria

Abstract: The intermittent nature of wind and solar power requires long-term energy storage options such as power-to-gas. This technology utilizes (surplus) electricity from renewable power sources to produce hydrogen in an electrolyzer. The produced hydrogen can be either directly utilized as an energy carrier or combined with CO2 and further converted to methane. This article evaluates different CO2 sources concerning their potential utilization within the power-to-gas energy storage technology with regard to capture costs, specific energy requirement and CO2 penalties. The results of a case study for Austria indicate that there is enough CO2 available from point sources to store all of the electricity produced from fluctuating renewable power sources (wind power plants and photovoltaics) via power-to-gas. Due to low capture costs, low CO2 penalties, biogenic origins, and short distances to wind power plants, biogas upgrading facilities and a bioethanol plant were determined to be the CO2 sources best suited for utilization in novel power-to-gas plants. However, as the total amount of CO2 produced from these facilities is relatively low in Austria, other CO2 sources would also be required. With moderate capture costs and CO2 penalties, power plants and an existing refinery could also provide CO2 for power-to-gas. Although large amounts of CO2 are available from iron, steel, and cement production facilities, these sources are not recommended for CO2 utilization in power-to-gas, as the CO2 penalty is relatively high and the facilities are rarely located near wind power plants in Austria.

Joint Energy and Spinning Reserve Market Clearing Incorporating Wind Power and Load Forecast Uncertainties

Abstract: This paper proposes an energy and spinning reserve market clearing (ESRMC) mechanism for wind–thermal power system, considering uncertainties in wind power and load forecasts. Two different market models for the ESRMC are proposed. One model includes reserve offers from the conventional thermal generators, and the other includes reserve offers from both thermal generators and demand/consumers. The stochastic behavior of wind speed and wind power is represented by the Weibull probability density function (pdf), and that of the load is represented by a normal pdf. This paper considers two objectives: total cost minimization and the system-risk-level minimization. The first objective includes the cost of energy provided by thermal and wind generators, and the cost of reserves provided by thermal generators and loads. It also includes costs due to overestimation and underestimation of available wind power and load demand. The system risk level is considered as another objective as wind power is highly uncertain. Multiobjective Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm 2+ (SPEA 2+) has been used to solve the ESRMC problem. The results of the IEEE 30 bus system demonstrate the utility of the proposed approach.

Local area grid for distributed power

Abstract: The invention in the simplest form is a system for managing distributed power sources connected to a power grid. The present invention manages power flow to/from the power grid whether for a stand-alone power sourece or for local area utility grid or microgrid. When two or more power sources are interconnected by the local grid, each source has a power conditioning unit and a circuit breaker manager for controlling and regulating the electric flow to/from the grid. The individual power sources are able to independently draw power from the grid when required without extensive master control schemes. In a preferred embodiment the power sources are reformer equipped fuel cells and the heat from the fuel cell is used as a heat source for efficiency.

Multi-stage robust unit commitment considering wind and demand response uncertainties

Abstract: With the increasing penetration of wind power into the power grid, maintaining system reliability has been a challenging issue for ISOs/RTOs, due to the intermittent nature of wind power. In addition to the traditional reserves provided by thermal, hydro, and gas generators, demand response (DR) programs have gained much attention recently as another reserve resource to mitigate wind power output uncertainty. However, the price-elastic demand curve is not exactly known in advance, which provides another dimension of uncertainty. To accommodate the combined uncertainties from wind power and DR, we allow the wind power output to vary within a given interval with the price-elastic demand curve also varying in this paper. We develop a robust optimization approach to derive an optimal unit commitment decision for the reliability unit commitment runs by ISOs/RTOs, with the objective of maximizing total social welfare under the joint worst-case wind power output and demand response scenario. The problem is formulated as a multi-stage robust mixed integer programming problem. An exact solution approach leveraging Benders' decomposition is developed to obtain the optimal robust unit commitment schedule for the problem. Additional variables are introduced to parameterize the conservatism of our model and avoid over protection. Finally, we test the performance of the proposed approach using a case study based on the IEEE 118-bus system. The results verify that our proposed approach can accommodate both wind power and demand response uncertainties, and demand response can help accommodate wind power output uncertainty by lowering the unit load cost.