Operational reserve of a power system with a large amount of wind power

Defining the needs of operating reserve in a power system has been always a subject of interest, leading to the development of deterministic rules (e.g. the percentage rule defined by UCTE in Europe or the well-known "largest unit" rule) and probabilistic methods like PJM (Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Man land) and its enhancements, based on the concept of risk. However, the recent increase in the penetration of wind power generation changed the framework of this evaluation, due to the volatile nature of this kind of energy. In this paper, a detailed model of the unavailability of wind parks that accounts both for machine failures and different wind levels is combined with the modified PJM method, in order to build a consistent framework for the evaluation of the operational risk. The paper also shows how the proposed model can be used as a decision-aid tool for planning the operational reserve, either by performing multicriteria analysis on cost and risk or by stipulating an acceptable risk level.