Economic Dispatch of Thermal Units with the Impact of Wind Power Plant

As wind power penetrations increase in current power systems, its impacts to conventional thermal unit should be investigated. Development of better wind-thermal co-ordination economic dispatch is necessary to determine the optimal dispatch scheme that can integrate wind power reliably & efficiently. This paper proposes co-ordination of Synchronous Generator (SG) and Induction Generator (IG) by a simulation method that can fully assess the impacts of large-scale wind power on system operations from cost, reliability & environmental perspectives. But, IG has synchronization and stability problems. Hence, STATCOM is suggested. It is reported that STATCOM can significantly decrease voltage fluctuations of grid connected fixed speed wind generators. Moreover, its reactive power output can also be controlled to keep the wind farm terminal voltage constant. Simulation results clearly show that the STATCOM unit can smooth well the wind-generator output power & also maintain the terminal voltage at rated level. Comprehensive results are presented to assess the performance of the STATCOM connected with IG at steady-state where the simulations have been done by Simulink/MATLAB. Gradient method (Newton-Raphson method) is utilized to co-ordinate the wind & thermal generation dispatch & to minimize the total generation cost in the economic dispatch considering wind power generation. Three conventional thermal units system along with two Non-conventional units is utilized for numerical solution. Different simulation scenarios with & without wind power production are simulated . Simulation results show the effect of wind power generation in reducing total fuel cost. The Simulink/MATLAB software is used for simulation.