An Isolated Industrial Power System Driven by Wind-Coal Power for Aluminum Productions: A Case Study of Frequency Control

Due to the uneven geographical distribution between load and wind power, currently it is difficult to integrate the large-scale wind power into the State Grid in China. There are significant wind curtailments for wind farms due to system restrictions. This paper proposes a new way of utilizing wind power, i.e., in-situ consumption, as an alternative to the costly development of long-distance transmission of large-scale wind power. Electrolytic aluminum load, which is one of the most typical high energy consuming loads, is employed to absorb the excess wind power in western China. An actual isolated industrial power system for aluminum production driven by wind power and coal-fired power is described. The penetration level of wind power in the isolated power system is up to 48.8%. The power imbalance between generation and load demand caused by wind power fluctuation or the tripping of coal-fired generators can dramatically impact the frequency stability of the isolated power system, which is of small inertia. An online identification method of power imbalance based on Wide Area Measurement System (WAMS) is presented. According to the characteristics of the electrolytic aluminum load, a system frequency control method by regulating the bus voltages of aluminum loads to eliminate the power imbalance is introduced. The simulation is done in Real Time Digital Simulator (RTDS) and the results verify the validity of the proposed frequency control method.