EFFECTS OF WIND FARM OPERATING REGIMES IN THE POWER SYSTEM OF MACEDONIA

Abstract

A b s t r a c t: The trend for achieving sustainable energy development, keeping the environment clean and utilization of renewable energy sources are imperative to the energy development in several countries. Through legislation and economical benefits, countries tend to encourage potential investors for building the technologies for energy production from renewable. In order to achieve the EU energy target to have 20% renewable in 2020, the technologies for producing electricity from renewable energy sources (RES) are used to cover the needs with more intensities. The most dominant renewable is the wind power plants(WPP) or wind parks, which are used to supply electricity to more power systems (EPS) and whose installed capacity in some European countries reaches thousands MW. This paper treats the issue of operational work of wind power in the power system of Macedonia. It is made of simulation work with wind power plants with total installed capacity of 150 MW with an annual production of 300 GWh. The considered power system of Macedonia is projected for the period of 2015 with an annual consumption of 10,000 GWh. The power plants considering operating in the simulated period are the existing thermal power units and hydro power plants together with the planned gas power plants and hydro power plants. The aim of this paper is to analyze the effects of the power system operation in case to have installed wind power plants, or what operation mode of thermal power plants (TPP) and hydro power plants (HPP) is most convenient when the system has a source of technology from the renewable with stochastically nature. This is especially important, because conventional power plants (TPP and HPP) operate and regulate the needs of consumption in the power system, but the wind power plants operate when the wind occurs within certain limits of  technical operating mode for wind turbines. Although wind is free renewable energy source, frequency of occurrence of wind with unpredictable nature and stochastically, has additional adverse impact in terms of power system operating mode. Certainly the impact of wind power on the overall the power system operation depends on power plants and configuration of the power system. In other words, the base load is covered from TPP fossil fuel or nuclear plants, and the dynamic nature of wind power can be incorporated in the power system depends on how much power plants for peak load are available in the system (storage reversible hydro or gas turbines), or how variable power can be accepted in the power system.