Coordinated Management of Electrical Energy in a Steelworks and a Wind Farm

This article proposes a coordinated management of electrical energy in a steelworks and a wind farm that are connected to the same distribution network. The suggested solution seeks to improve the efficiency of the hot rolling mill, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to minimize the cost of the electrical energy utilized in the manufacture of steel coils, to increase the power system chargeability, and to guarantee power quality. The proposal consists of constituting a virtual plant (comprising the wind farm and the rolling mill) to be managed by a single operator. The approach is mainly focused on the management of the virtual plant reactive power. The algorithm proposed to optimize this reactive power is based on the so-called particle swarm optimization. Three optimization strategies are analyzed: minimization of losses in the distribution network, minimization of the voltage deviation at two of its nodes, and maximization of the displacement factor in both the rolling mill and the wind farm. Energy losses are reduced by up to 20% when adopting the first strategy in comparison to the least efficient case. Voltage variations are kept at less than 1% at both nodes when using the second strategy, whereas deviations between 1% and 5% are obtained when implementing the other two strategies. The study is based on actual measurements and simulation tests.