From 2GreenEnergy Intern Nikita Rao: The Addition of New Technologies

Recently, Science Daily published an article based on the research of scientists from the University of North Carolina and John Hopkins, outlining the results of adding renewable energy sources to the grid, and offering ideas on how to mitigate issues associate with this.

The developing renewable energy sources have a very high capital cost input, which in comparison with natural gas is hard to compete with. These renewable resources are abundant, and unlike natural gas will be available for many more years. Since there is a huge necessity of investments, incentives have been made to utilize renewable energy, because in the long run the benefits outweigh the cost. Among the many choices, wind energy is the most useful and is widely distributed in the US.

As to any new idea there is always an advantage and a disadvantage. The most important advantage is the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by using turbines that produce energy and electricity when moved by wind. The disadvantages of using wind energy would be the need of specific locations to implement the new facilities; which would also have high capital costs.

However, researchers from North Carolina University and John Hopkins state that an increase in the generation of wind power can make the grid more fragile and susceptible to disruptions. On the bright side the researchers have also succeeded in finding a solution to minimize this disruption. They have devised a technique for coordination of power generation and energy storage to minimize the potential for such power disruption.

The wind energy disruption arises because of the power flowing through the transmission line of a power grid, which leads to small oscillations. A controller within the generator mitigates these oscillations. If the controls are not strong then the oscillations tends to become sustained, thus reducing the efficiency and hence posing a threat to the grid stability. An example of this sort of oscillation was experienced on the West Coast of the US in 1996.

The researchers realized that wind power generators make these oscillations worse because wind farms produce power erratically. To overcome this disruption, the researchers have designed a technique that regulates the activity of the controllers inside the wind turbine and its battery management system to balance the flow from wind farms into the grid.

The researchers proved their hypothesis correct by developing several algorithms that matched the control efforts between wind farms and energy storage facilities. Therefore an output increase can be used to charge the batteries in the storage facility instead of overloading the power grid; if the power output at a wind farm declines the batteries can compensate for the loss and provide power to the grid.

Reference: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140102113124.htm