Utilization of the Area Risk Concept for Operational Reliability Evaluation of a Wind-Integrated Power System

Wind power generation is significantly different from conventional thermal and hydro power generation in the sense that the wind power is governed by the atmosphere and cannot be dispatched like the conventional units in order to respond to the system requirements. The operational reliability of a conventional system depends on the failures of the committed units and the lead time of the next available unit. The reliability contribution of a wind turbine generator is mainly governed by the variability of wind speed at the wind site. A short-term wind model developed for the specific lead time should be suitably combined with the other committed units to evaluate the operational reliability of a power system with significant wind penetration. The area risk concept, previously developed to evaluate the reliability contribution of rapid start units and hot reserve units that are committed later in the lead time, is extended in this paper to incorporate wind power in evaluating the system reliability. The developed method is applied to the IEEE-RTS to evaluate the operational system well-being indices.