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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: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 22 2020, @12:24AM (1 child)
I got the impression that it's the quantity of wind turbines -- add a few turbines to a "traditionally-stabilized" grid and not much happens. Add hundreds or thousands of simple wind turbines[*] and then there is a problem. Paper discusses (I think) an electronically regulated turbine with an inverter connecting the generator to the grid--thus frequency and power can be controlled separately.
[*] By simple turbine I'm thinking of the one I toured in CA in the 1980s--the generator was basically a large induction motor that was forced to run above synchronous speed when the wind was blowing. Our tour in the Altamont Pass was on a rare calm day--and our tour guide turned on the wind turbine briefly so we could watch it spin, in that case the generator was working as a motor (and it used a few cents of electric power). Power and rpm were permanently linked by the motor characteristics, assuming a fixed grid frequency.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 23 2020, @01:38AM
That sounds about right. Thank you for the thoughtful reply.