Extension of area risk concepts to incorporate wind power in unit commitment risk evaluation

Large scale wind power installations are growing rapidly all over the world. The inherent variability associated with wind power generation is causing increased concerns to electric power system operators where wind power penetration is significant. The reliability concerns of a conventional generating unit and a wind turbine generator are different in the sense that wind power generation shows random variations between zero and the rated capacity. This is not the case with conventional generation where the generation level can be controlled to dispatch power as required. The unit commitment risk analysis of a wind integrated power system should encompass the uncertainty of wind power output along with the stochastic failures of the conventional generation. This paper utilizes the time series model of wind speed and the conditional probability approach to quantify the short term variability of wind power generation. The wind power variability is appropriately combined with the rest of the system using the area risk concept to measure contribution of wind power in the unit commitment risk.