Essential Reliability Services from Utility-Scale PV Power Plants

摘要

A key enabler in integrating large amount of PV generation into the electric power grid, is the capability of utility-scale PV plants to address grid reliability and stability concerns. PV plants with “grid-friendly” features such as voltage regulation, active power controls, ramp rate controls, fault ride-through, frequency droop control and others have alleviated these concerns. The viability of PV plants to provide important ancillary services to the grid was recently demonstrated in a test conducted with NREL and CAISO on a 300MW utility-scale PV plant. The results showed that the PV plant value can be extended from being simply an energy source to provide services such as spinning reserves, load following, ramping, frequency response, variability smoothing & frequency regulation. The results showed that a PV plant can regulate to 4-second Automated Generator Control (AGC) signal 24-30 points more accurately than even fast gas turbines.