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The rapid expansion of wind power has triggered significant wind curtailment because the power system lacks flexibility to deal with the uncertainty and variability of wind power. The operational flexibility of coal-fired power plants is limited by the minimum stable firing rate in the boiler. Steam extraction and thermal energy storage could enable power output adjustment without changing the firing rate in the boiler. Thus, retrofitting existing coal-fired power plants with steam extraction and thermal energy storage is a promising option to accommodate the high penetration of wind power in the power system, especially in coal-dominated power system. This study investigated the operational flexibility of coal-fired power plants retrofitted with steam extraction and thermal energy storage. First, a linear operation model is proposed for retrofitted coal-fired power plants considering new characteristics and technical constraints. Second, a simulation framework based on stochastic unit commitment and rolling economic dispatch is developed to explore the benefits of steam extraction and thermal energy storage in wind-integrated power systems. The forecasted wind power data is used in stochastic unit commitment to evaluate start-up and shut-down cost, while real wind power data is adopted in rolling economic dispatch to calculate the actual production cost. The simulation results on the modified IEEE 24-bus system demonstrate the effectiveness of retrofitting coal-fired power plants with steam extraction and thermal energy storage for mitigating wind curtailment.
Wang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.