Technical and Economical Comparison of Reactive Power Provision with Variable Renewable Energy Power Plants and Compensation Systems

Recently, ancillary services are mainly provided by conventional power plants. As utilization of these sources decrease, alternatives must be found. Variable renewable energy power plants can be used to contribute to ancillary services for enhancing the quality of service and resilience of the power system. In this work, the provision of reactive power with these power plants is technically and economically compared to reactive power compensation systems. For the econom-ical investigation, a methodology and a remuneration system are developed and presented. The investigation is performed on a real high-voltage grid in Germany. Results demonstrate, that variable renewable energy power plants are cost-efficient sources for reactive power provision.