2011 CCET Wholesale TAG Meeting Summaries
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April 28, 2011
The Wholesale Stakeholders Group led by Chairman Bill Bojorquez of Sharyland Utilities met at the ERCOT facilities in Taylor, Texas on April 28, 2011. After introductions, Bill changed the order of the agenda and invited Kuru Kuruvilla of GE Energy to provide a presentation on active wind generation control. Bill emphasized that once the TDUs get KREZ lines in place, TDUs will want to define the necessary infrastructure to support wind. Kuru then covered the GE capability termed WindINERTIA which provides an inertial response option for GE wind turbine generators.
The intent of the discussion was to address, from a frequency response perspective, how wind turbines can help the grid. Large disturbances (trips) cause an unbalance that must be corrected by "Frequency Response" and this occurs during multiple time frames - inertial response, governor response, and automatic generation control (AGC) response. GE used a study of wind addition to the Western Electricity Coordination Council (WECC) to show pre- and post-improvements for frequency response by quantifying how frequency response benefits in various scenarios. In this case, a plant trips and then there are possible options:
- 20% wind generation without any frequency response controls,
- no wind (with native based frequency response - NBFR),
- 20% wind (with a range of NBFR)
The windINERTIA concept uses controls to extract stored inertial energy and provide incremental energy during the inertial timeframe (allowing time for governors to react). The target inertia constant is 3.5 pu-sec (similar to a commercial generator). Wind turbines prefer variable speed to optimize power generation based on wind speed. The approach is to use mechanical and electrical torque to slow down the wind turbine and extract power to cover the inertial response.
John Adams of ERCOT then began a discussion on monitoring requirements for small signal stability (SSR) in ERCOT and Fred Wuang of ERCOT presented a paper on the West-North (WN) Transfer Stability Limit - June 2009.
ERCOT is using this study for operator training. ERCOT will need to calculate WN transfer stability limit. ERCOT is currently using PMU data to validate the model and the results are pretty close. Transfer stability limit is decided based on a combination of line outage, unit outage, and contingency. WN transfer stability limit is maintained by monitoring six 345kW transmission lines. The limit can increase/reduce by 900MW because of one unit/train status change. There are two sub-region oscillations at .75Hz and two others at .55Hz. ERCOT will need to check the dominant one depending on the topology and load and this is where a PSS would really help.
Chris LeBlanc of National Instruments presented slides on NIWeek which is a worldwide graphical system design conference and exhibition occurring from 2-4 August, 2011.
“National Instruments is hosting NIWeek, the industry's premier event on graphical system design that attracts more than 3,000 of the world's brightest engineers, educators, and scientists. NIWeek 2011, the company's 17th annual customer and technology conference, opens August 2 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas, for three days of interactive technical sessions, targeted summits, hands-on workshops, and exhibitions on the latest developments for design, control, automation, manufacturing, and test. The conference also features keynote presentations and demonstrations that highlight how engineers and scientists can use NI graphical system design to test, measure, and fix inefficient products and processes to improve everyday life.” More information is available at National Instruments/NIWeek website.
National Instruments has offered to host the summer CCET Board meeting at the conference.
Dr. Milton Holloway of CCET then summarized the recent messaging activities for CCET's Discovery Across Texas project. CCET has hired Marketwave, a public relations firm, of Dallas, Texas to conduct a messaging exercise. A summary of the messaging materials will be the basis for future public displays and presentations is in progress.
Bob Davis of CCET then presented information on DOE FOA 479 - SunShot Initiative. The FOA is providing $110M for research into utility-scale solar solutions. The real intent is to reduce the installed cost of solar from the current $4 per watt to $1 per watt.
There are actually three FOAs: one addresses solar modules (half the funding), one is FOA 479 which includes power electronics (integration with smart grid), and one is FOA493 which has four topics - building technologies, mounting systems, wind load codes, and solar solutions that complement wind (such as building solar farms in-between wind turbines).
Bob Davis of CCET then discussed that for three years CCET has sponsored a university /college student contest with IEEE Region 5. Bob requested topic ideas for the next student contest and it was discussed whether to take the contest to the national level. The contest is currently available to all university / college students within the IEEE Region 5.
Bill Bojorquez of Sharyland Utilities then began a discussion asking what level of availability and reliability and operational system requirements are required for a production system RTDMS without focusing on the application. Bill would like to define the hardware, software, network, etc.
After the discussion of production grade RTDMS, the wholesale market stakeholders group meeting adjourned.