Generation scheduling for wind power generation by storage battery system and meteorological forecast

The Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry in Japan published a target to install 3GW wind power generation to be connected to grids by 2010. However, as outputs from wind power generation fluctuate time to time and wind power resources are available only in specific areas, deterioration of the quality of utility’s power supply has become an important issue to be solved. As a countermeasure for the problem, the government began to subsidize wind power generators for storage battery systems, which enable them to make fluctuations of wind power outputs smooth. Also, an electric power company has announced technical-requirements to connect such systems to the grid. One of the requirements is to stabilize fluctuating outputs of wind power generation within a prescribed level, and the other is to operate wind power generation according to a submitted generation schedule. This paper presents two types of control systems to meet these requirements. Each control system was verified to be practical by simulations based on an actual network and data. Necessary capacities of the storage battery to fulfill two technical-requirements are determined respectively. In addition, the validity of the proposed control schemes and usefulness of storage batteries to realize the scheduled generation of wind farms are described.