PNNL

Abstract

Abstract— The increasing uncertainty caused by a higher penetration level of renewable energy points to the need for sufficient balancing services to ensure secure operation. It is thus of necessity to accurately quantify these services and evaluate the cycling and movement of conventional generators providing load following and regulation services for optimally planning and scheduling multiple resources. This paper first introduces a systematic approach to calculating load following and regulation requirements with a large amount of solar integration. Then, two methods to quantitatively determine the cycling of conventional generators are proposed, including (1) mileage and number of direction changes in balancing service and (2) ramp statistics (or half-cycle) analysis. The proposed methods are tested on the NV Energy power system model. Simulation results demonstrate a significant impact of increased solar capacity on balancing service and cycling of conventional generators. Busy hours are identified for different study scenarios with various solar penetration levels. This study provides a basis for evaluating the wear and tear of the conventional generators in the solar integration process in the Nevada power system. Index Terms—balancing requirement, conventional generator, cycling and movement, load following, regulation, renewable energy, solar integration