The impact of wind-power generation on the planning of regulating reserve

This paper presents new approach to the optimal distribution of the regulating reserve (RR) in a set of available regulating generation units. It is developed using evolutionary computation for the transmission-loss minimization and power-flow computation by applying the iterative method with a reactive power correction for voltage control. The approach involves the use of actual operating data directly from the network’s dispatch centre as well as daily and hourly plans of wind and load power for determining the RR requirements for the load frequency control (LFC). By testing the proposed approach on a case study, the possibility of implementing it on real power systems is demonstrated. The obtained results of the testing with actual data from the Croatian control area indicate substantial savings in ancillary service costs for the LFC and the considerable impact of different variations from the plan of each individual wind-power plant on the optimal RR distribution.