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New system uses wind turbines to defend the national grid from power cut:
Lead researcher Professor Xiao-Ping Zhang, Director of Smart Grid in the Birmingham Energy Institute, comments: "By 2030 wind is expected to provide half the UK's power, so it's important that we can use the wind farms provide a vital safety mechanism of controlling frequency dips of UK's national power grid. Our proposed frequency control system for wind turbines could revolutionise the UK's power grid's frequency control and, importantly, uses our existing infrastructure of wind turbines and it will not need additional devices and investments."
The most recent severe power cut, in August 2019, caused blackouts across the Midlands, South East, South West, North West and North East of England, and Wales. The incident was triggered by two almost simultaneous unexpected power losses at Hornsea and Little Barford due to lightning strikes.
[...] "As the UK increases its reliance on wind power, it will become even more important to find effective ways to use the turbine systems to provide this service and maintain effective regulation of the grid. Current methods of using wind turbines to regulate electricity struggle to provide consistent support because of variable wind speeds and other system conditions," adds Professor Zhang.
The method proposed by the Birmingham team harnesses the potential of wind turbines to operate at variable speeds to provide the flexibility required to respond to fluctuations in supply and demand.
Zhang (2020): "Fast Frequency Support From Wind Turbine Systems by Arresting Frequency Nadir Close to Settling Frequency," IEEE Open Access Journal of Power and Energy, vol. 7, pp. 191-202, 2020, doi: 10.1109/OAJPE.2020.2996949.
(Score: 3, Informative) by pe1rxq on Sunday June 21 2020, @11:07PM (1 child)
How do you think they maintain that 50Hz?
The answer is simple: By having the suppliers pull a bit ahead or behind if the frequency is of.
In the old fashioned way a large supplier would spend part of its generated power in dragging the phase of the whole net to the desired direction.
You can do the same with turbines, and if you use the smart you might even be able to do it better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @01:24PM
Yup, overall, they don't care if it is exactly 50Hz all that much, if it drops to 49 or jumps to 52 it is fine, as long as they can get the average to be 50 (so the clocks are unaffected over the long haul).