Coordinated Operation of Concentrated Solar Power and Wind Resources for the Provision of Energy and Reserve Services

Renewable energy poses increasing challenges for power systems due to its variability, intermittency and uncertainty. The concentrated solar power (CSP) plant represents a promising alternative source of renewable energy technology and allows for the incorporation of thermal energy storage (TES) to store energy for later use. Furthermore, an electric heater (EH) can be integrated in CSP plant to convert supplemental energy from other sources into thermal energy for utilizations. Both TES and EH devices provide operational flexibility into power systems to accommodate more renewable energy through strategic scheduling and dispatching. Thus, we devote this paper to develop a stochastic two-stage day-ahead unit commitment model and a rolling look-ahead economic dispatch model with the integration of CSP and wind resources. We apply the proposed approach to assess the role of TES and EH in the improvement of the system's operational flexibility. Specifically, we focus on their contribution to the mitigation of the uncertainty in the outputs of renewable resources, to the reserve requirements and to the reduction of overall system costs. We perform extensive studies on a modified IEEE test system using real solar and wind data with different configurations of CSP, TES and EH. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of CSP with TES and EH in promoting the further integration of renewable energy.