Flexibility Management in Economic Dispatch with Dynamic Automatic Generation Control

TL;DR

This paper introduces a robust optimization framework to evaluate power system flexibility by analyzing the interaction between economic dispatch and automatic generation control, considering renewable integration challenges.

Contribution

It proposes a novel cutting plane algorithm with reformulation techniques to quantify system flexibility through seven indices, accounting for various operational factors.

Findings

Operational cost budget significantly affects system flexibility.

Ramping capability influences the system's ability to adapt to renewable fluctuations.

Transmission capacity impacts the overall system flexibility.

Abstract

As the installation of electronically interconnected renewable energy resources grows rapidly in power systems, system frequency maintenance and control become challenging problems to maintain the system reliability in bulk power systems. As two of the most important frequency control actions in the control centers of independent system operators (ISOs) and utilities, the interaction between Economic Dispatch (ED) and Automatic Generation Control (AGC) attracts more and more attention. In this paper, we propose a robust optimization based framework to measure the system flexibility by considering the interaction between two hierarchical processes (i.e., ED and AGC). We propose a cutting plane algorithm with the reformulation technique to obtain seven different indices of the system. In addition, we study the impacts of several system factors (i.e., the budget of operational cost, ramping capability, and transmission line capacity) and show numerically how these factors can influence the system flexibility.