The objective of this research is to understand and model integration of intermittent renewables. The research is aimed at systematically understanding the costs, due to increased Ancillary Services requirements and transmission, and benefits of large-scale integration. The approach is to consider both short-term operations and long-term capital expansion. The short-term modeling involves the consideration of the amount of Ancillary Services necessary to satisfy North American Reliability Corporation (NERC) standards for frequency control. The analysis will be accomplished through modeling wind power production as a stochastic process and using a sensitivity analysis with respect to the level of renewables of the control performance of automatic generation control. The long-term modeling augments classical screening curve analysis to represent the capital and operating costs implications of the need for large amounts of Ancillary Services and increased transmission.
Intellectual Merit The intellectual merit of the research is that it will more realistically represent issues than in existing renewable integration studies, and will also seek to avoid data intensive and computationally intensive approaches based on full production cost simulation. The work will develop screening tools that will be useful to estimate costs and for policy analysis, and provide qualitative insights into important issues.
Broader Impact The work proposed here will have the broader impact of enabling principles-based analysis of the most economic ways to reduce greenhouse emissions, considering the full implications of integration of renewable generation assets. This understanding will inform cost-effective investment in a portfolio of generation resources to reduce overall greenhouse emissions.
