The Impact of Wind Power on the Dynamical Behavior of Power System Frequency

Abstract: As we introduce increasing amounts of renewable power sources to the existing power system infrastructure, the need of studying its behaviour increases. Lowered power system inertia, caused by replacing conventional power plants with energy sources that do not provide inertia to the grid, can cause challenges in operating a system in a stable and costeffective manner. In this paper we analyze the effects of increasing amounts of wind power on the system frequency.To assess the effects of higher wind power penetration, we have used three years of power grid data from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). From these data we then extract data of interest according to adjustable parameters. Further the data of interest are categorized based on power losses and wind power penetration.As the installed wind power capacity has increased during analyzed years, the categorization by wind power penetration level is complicated. After constructing the categorization we conclude that given higher wind power penetration levels, the system experiences lesser system inertia. This in turn caused the maximum IFD, following sudden losses of generated power, to be higher on average when wind power penetration is high.