Coupling Wind Generation with Controllable Loads and Storage: A Time-Series Application of the SuperOPF

As electric utilities are required to purchase increasing amounts of energy from renewable resources, the intermittent nature of these resources will play a significant role in shaping power system operations and planning. The anticipated capacity of wind power to be installed suggests that significant increases in regulation reserves will be required, which will fundamentally alter the traditional generation technology mix. This will place a greater value on technologies with flexible and rapid response capabilities, highlighting an increased role for storage technologies and demand response in the new regime.

PSERC researchers at Cornell have developed a new planning tool that is a stochastic form of Security Constrained Optimal Power Flow (SCOPF), the SuperOPF. Two key features of the SuperOPF that distinguish it from most other planning models are 1) the effects of equipment failures (contingencies) and the uncertainty of potential wind generation are considered explicitly, and 2) the amount of reserves required to maintain reliability is determined endogenously
instead of adding predetermined constraints for fixed levels of reserves in different regions. From a planning perspective, determining reserve requirements endogenously is an essential feature for evaluating the effects of adding intermittent sources of generation such as wind power. The model also includes the ramping costs of mitigating wind variability explicitly in the optimization. In the final chapter, a new multi-period version of the SuperOPF is used to demonstrate how different types of storage can be managed optimally and reduce total system costs substantially.