Wind generation as a reserve provider

Wind generation is notorious for its high intermittency and limited predictability. To account for the uncertainty induced by wind in day-ahead planning, system operators provide additional reserve by scheduling controllable generators at a less than optimal output, therefore increasing the operating cost and, in some cases, negating the benefits of relatively cheap wind generation. This study proposes a day-ahead decision-making framework that minimises the operating cost by derating the wind production and, consequently, reducing the reserve requirements. The headroom in wind generation that this deration creates is used to provide upward reserve. This deration also decreases the reserve requirement because it reduces the uncertainty of wind power generation. The proposed methodology has been tested on a modified 24-bus IEEE Reliability Test System with different reserve policies under different wind penetration levels. This case study is based on the mixed-integer linear unit commitment model, which enables exploring economic benefits of the proposed methodology while the technical constraints on the power system generation are duly enforced. The results demonstrate that the proposed methodology reduces the total operating cost, even when wind power producers are compensated for the reserve provision by their lost opportunity cost.