Professor James L. Kirtley, Jr.
PI at MIT
Professor Mohamed Shawky El Moursi
PI at MIT
This research is aimed to analyze and investigate the impacts of large wind farm integration into the electric grid on the transmission system level. These analyses along with the recognized international grid codes and standards will lead to development of new grid interface schemes, ensuring optimum integration with consideration of the stability, reliability, and economical aspects. The topologies developed should fulfill the grid code requirements, minimize the impacts of wind power plants integration, and mitigate the effect of the wind intermittency on the system, providing a wind power plant similar in capabilities to conventional power plants. The objective of the project is to develop a framework of large penetration of wind power generation.
Relevance
There is a great increase in the number of wind farms connected to electric grids and wind energy is still seen as a new technology which may be of great influence on electric grid stability, reliability, and security. This project studies and assesses the optimum solutions to integrating a large portion of wind energy generation into the electric grid in the Abu Dhabi area.
First the components of the wind power plant are modeled each in different levels of detail and accordingly implemented in different simulation tools. This is to allow the study to cover a large range of time responses (e.g. the model for Abu Dhabi area).
Among the wind power plants components is the controller which will be designed adequately to lead to better integrating of the plant. The controller along with compensation devices/components will mitigate various unwanted phenomena. This integration fosters the feasibility of the comprehensive energy system initiated by Masdar Institute.
Energy storage devices are considered with special focus among those compensating devices; the energy storage technologies will be reviewed and studied from many aspects in order to identify the one that is fit to the deliver the required support to the wind farm in the most economical way yet with the best performance.
