Exploiting Inertia of Wind Turbines in Power Network Frequency Control: A Model Predictive Control Approach

With the expected increase in penetration level of wind turbine generators in the near future, it will be necessary for them to participate in power network frequency control. In this paper we exploit the inertia of wind turbine generators using model predictive control (MPC). In this way wind turbines can actively contribute to primary control. Safe operation is possible because MPC explicitly takes safety constraints into account. In a case study a nonlinear model of a power network is balanced by exploiting the inertial response of wind turbine generators. We have considered both centralized MPC and a decentralized MPC implementation, and have shown their efficiency in counteracting deviations in generation and demand introduced either by unpredictable exogenous disturbances, or by imbalanced transients during market rescheduling processes. The obtained results demonstrate the potential of wind turbine inertia exploitation in contributing to the challenging task of balancing future power networks.