Automatic generation control in wind integrated power system: new perspectives and challenges

Green energy targets for coming decades advocate high penetration of wind energy in main energy matrix, which pose incendiary threat to stability and reliability of modern electric grid if their integration aspects are not assessed beforehand. Real-time balancing of demand and supply or Automatic generation control is a challenging task in modern electric grid when penetrated with unpredictable and variable wind power. Regulation power along with corresponding cost is expected to increase highly with increased penetration of wind energy in main grid. With conventional plants getting abridged under renewable energy targets; wind plants as largest energy contributor are expected to actively participate in providing frequency regulation. Even though ample literature exists describing traditional role of conventional fuel based generating system for frequency regulations in electric grid, yet very few of them deal with frequency regulation of wind energy integrated power grid till date. This paper reviews the existing research literature for automatic generation control involving secondary frequency regulation for wind integrated power system. An attempt has been made to give an insight to new perspectives & challenges for secondary frequency control which need more advanced investigation for future implementation in electric grid. A modelling approach for studying secondary frequency regulation with technologically advanced wind integrated power system is also presented.