Wind farms can do more than just pump out electricity. Even so, the market for new projects faces strong headwinds in offshore wind farms.
JUSTIN GERDES reports for gtm
Utility-scale wind farms can do a lot more than just feed electricity into the grid. Could unlocking their ability to provide ancillary grid services help to stimulate California’s moribund wind market?
In tests conducted at the Tule wind farm in San Diego County last year, California’s grid operator determined that the project could provide essential services to the grid. The ability to provide those ancillary services could make it easier to add variable renewable energy sources to the grid, according to the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), which published a report (PDF) on the research project this month.
The 131-megawatt Tule project, which is operated by Avangrid Renewables, is equipped with an inverter-based smart controller that sends signals to all 57 turbines in the project, allowing them to operate as a single plant.
The tests determined that ancillary services typically provided by natural-gas generators, such as voltage regulation control, active power control and frequency response, can be supplied by a commercial wind farm outfitted with a plant-level controller.
“This means wind can be another way to inject stability into the grid from renewables sources and to create commercial paths for incorporating rising amounts onto the grid,” Clyde Loutan, report co-author and renewable energy adviser at CAISO, said in a statement (PDF).
CAISO conducted the tests in partnership with Avangrid Renewables, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and General Electric, the plant’s turbine manufacturer. Previous CAISO-led tests had already established that utility-scale solar PV plants can provide grid services
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