The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has released a report on wind farm integration which finds that South Australia and Tasmania will face issues with managing a surging amount of wind generated electricity.
The Wind Integration Studies Report outlines how the Australian electricity market will have to adapt in order to take on 8.88GW of wind energy by 2020. It identifies a number of technological hurdles that the present wind energy contribution will have to face as it ramps up to 11.5GW. These hurdles include power system inertia, control of power system frequency, the reduction of existing interconnector transfer limits, curtailment of wind energy generation due to network limitations and various other issues.
The report goes on to recommend changes to processes, systems and regulatory instruments in order to assist the integration of wind power generation. This could include new ancillary service requirements providing services that allow adequate control of power system frequency under conditions of low power system inertia, investment in purpose-built synchronous condensers to maintain system inertia and power system fault levels, enabling existing generating units to operate either with reduced minimum load or as synchronous condensers and establishing new control schemes to ensure adequate control of power.
The impacts of these issues will be felt first in South Australia and Tasmania because of the projected levels of wind power generation in those areas. South Australia already sources 27 percent of its electricity demand from wind energy and is expected to double that amount by 2020 while Tasmania is expected to triple its current capacity. Further challenges to the grid will be presented by rooftop PV and from changing consumer behaviour resulting in a declining amount of power sourced from the grid itself.
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