Taming the Intermittent Nature of Renewable Energy

With the CO2 concentration passing the 400 ppm mark, there is an urgent need to substantially increase wind and solar power penetration as soon as possible. However, the intermittent nature of wind and solar power has been... [ view full abstract ]

With the CO2 concentration passing the 400 ppm mark, there is an urgent need to substantially increase wind and solar power penetration as soon as possible. However, the intermittent nature of wind and solar power has been identified as a de-stabilizing force to the power grid. It is envisaged that more stability issues will evolve as the amount of renewable power generation increases. With more distributed power generation, the control paradigm has to be changed so that ‘the load demand will follow the power generation', in contrast to existing control paradigm that ‘the power generation follows the load demand'.

This talk begins with a brief review of existing technologies for improving power system stability. Then an emerging power-electronic based technology known as Electric Springs will be described. The functions of three versions of electric springs for power system stability will be explained. Practical verifications of these circuits will be reported with practical measurements obtained from a 100kVA hardware micro-grid simulator. Based on large-scale power system simulations, the effects of using distributed electric springs in large power system will be reported.