Skip to main content

Advertisement

Log in

The impact of turbulent renewable energy production on power grid stability and quality

The European Physical Journal B Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Feed-in fluctuations induced by renewables are one of the key challenges to the stability and quality of electrical power grids. In particular short-term fluctuations disturb the system on a time scale, on which load balancing does not operate yet and the system is intrinsically governed by self-organized synchronization. Wind and solar power are known to be strongly non-Gaussian with intermittent increment statistics in these time scales. We investigate the impact of short-term wind fluctuations on the basis of a Kuramoto-like power grid model considering stability in terms of desynchronization and frequency and voltage quality aspects. We present a procedure to generate realistic feed-in fluctuations with temporal correlations, Kolmogorov power spectrum and intermittent increments. By comparison to correlated Gaussian noise of the same spectrum and Gaussian white noise, we found out that while the correlations are essential to capture the likelihood of severe outages, the intermittent nature of wind power has significant consequences on power quality: intermittency is directly transferred into frequency and voltage fluctuations yielding a novel type of fluctuations, which is beyond engineering status of knowledge.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. M. Anvari, G. Lohmann, M. Wächter, E. Lorenz, D. Heinemann, W.R.R. Tabar, J. Peinke, New J. Phys. 18, 063027 (2016)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  2. P. Milan, M. Wächter, J. Peinke, Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 138701 (2013)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  3. J. Apt, J. Power Sources 169, 369 (2007)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  4. R. Calif, F.G. Schmitt, Nonlinear Process. Geophys. 21, 379 (2014)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  5. O. Kamps, in Wind energy – impact of turbulence (Springer, 2014), Vol. 2, pp. 67–72

  6. P. Kundur, N.J. Balu, M.G. Lauby, Power system stability and control (McGraw-Hill, 1994)

  7. J. Machowski, J. Bialek, D. Bumby, Power system dynamics: stability and control (John Wiley & Sons, 2008)

  8. G. Filatrella, A.H. Nielsen, N.F. Pedersen, Eur. Phys. J. B 61, 485 (2008)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  9. F. Dörfler, F. Bullo, in American Control Conference (2010), pp. 930–937

  10. D. Witthaut, M. Timme, New J. Phys. 14, 083036 (2012)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  11. P.J. Menck, J. Heitzig, J. Kurths, H.J. Schellnhuber, Nat. Commun. 5, 3969 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. A.E. Motter, S.A. Myers, M. Anghel, T. Nishikawa, Nat. Phys. 9, 191 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. M. Rohden, A. Sorge, M. Timme, D. Witthaut, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 064101 (2012)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  14. B. Schäfer, M. Matthiae, X. Zhang, M. Rohden, M. Timme, D. Witthaut, Phys. Rev. E 95, 060203(R) (2017)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  15. X. Zhang et al., in preparation

  16. K. Schmietendorf, J. Peinke, O. Kamps, R. Friedrich, Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 223, 2577 (2014)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  17. C. Grigg et al., IEEE Trans. Power Syst. 14, 3 (1999)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. O. Kamps, in preparation

  19. D. Hill et al., IEEE Trans. Power Syst. 19, 1387 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. P. Menck, J. Heitzig, N. Marwan, J. Kurths, Nat. Phys. 9, 89 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. F. Hellmann, P. Schultz, C. Grabow, J. Heitzig, J. Kurths, Sci. Rep. 6, 29654 (2016)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  22. ENTSO-E, Operation handbook policy 1, Tech. rep., 2009

  23. H. Ibrahim, M. Ghandour, M. Dimitrova, A. Ilinca, J. Perron, Energy Procedia 6, 815 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. A. Pikovsky, J.K.M. Rosenblum, J. Kurths, Synchronization: a universal concept in nonlinear sciences (Cambridge University Press, 2003)

  25. M.H. Albadi, E.F. El-Saadany, Electr. Power Syst. Res. 80, 627 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Katrin Schmietendorf.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Schmietendorf, K., Peinke, J. & Kamps, O. The impact of turbulent renewable energy production on power grid stability and quality. Eur. Phys. J. B 90, 222 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2017-80352-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2017-80352-8

Keywords

Navigation