Demand Side Frequency Control Scheme in an Isolated Wind Power System for Industrial Aluminum Smelting Production

Reducing the fossil fuel consumption of aluminum smelting production, which consumes around 8% of electricity annually, is of great significance for China´s energy sector. One possible solution is to integrate wind power as supply for aluminum smelter loads. Based on this background, this paper studies an actual industrial case-an isolated power system for aluminum production with integrated wind penetration levels as high as 30%. However, due to the integration of wind power, frequency stability issues become critical in such a system. Therefore, a demand-side frequency control scheme responding to frequency deviations of the system is proposed in this paper to control the load power of aluminum smelters. The scheme is designed based on the relationship between the DC voltage supply for aluminum smelting loads and the commutation voltage drop which can be adjusted by changing the inductance value of the saturable reactors. Finally, simulations under both N-1 and N-2 contingency scenarios demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme considering various wind power outputs.