Key issues of wind capacity integration in congested areas of the Taiwan power system

As wind power penetrations increase in isolated power systems, it is very important to understand how variations in wind plant outputs affect the operation of the multi-area isolated system on a day-to-day basis and what the associated costs are. Production cost models need to be further advanced to adequately simulate utility operations and unit commitment (UC) of generation in response to higher wind penetrations. In this study, the dynamic programming (DP) algorithm is extended to facilitate economic sharing of generation and reserve across areas and to coordinate wind and thermal generation scheduling in isolated power systems with large integration of wind capacity. Five heuristic strategies are incorporated in the DP algorithm to improve solution quality and performance. Four important issues of wind capacity integration in congested areas of the Taiwan power system are also investigated and discussed by using the developed UC software. Numerical experiments are included to understand wind generator capacity in production cost analysis and to illustrate the effect of transmission capacity limits on wind power penetration level in each area.