Stochastic assessment of opportunities for wind power curtailment

An important characteristic of wind power is its stochastic and non-dispatchable nature. Because of the development of wind power in recent years, stochasticity is becoming a driving parameter in the power system. Unpredicted and excessive power flows in the power system may be a result of this, especially since the pace of wind power developments is faster than transmission system re-inforcements. These developments, in combination with the limited operational flexibility of the conventional generation units within short time-spans, makes the future integration of large-scale wind power in the power system a challenging task. Temporary curtailment of wind power might provide a favourable solution for this, especially if this lifts barriers for further growth of wind power capacity. This paper presents a stochastic methodology for the assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of wind power curtailment as a solution for system congestion in relation to increasing wind power penetration. The method is applied in a number of case studies and is shown to reduce line overloading risks and power flow distribution variability, thereby increasing the feasibility for further wind power development.