The technical capabilities of wind and solar power plants have made dramatic progress in the past 7-8 years. It is now possible to get a full range of ancillary services from a wind plant with Type 3 or Type 4 turbines, or from a solar plant with the latest power electronic converter technology. These plants can provide all of the essential reliability services as identified in the NERC Essential Reliability Services Task Force (ERSTF).
This includes the full range of active power control, including the full range of AGC functions integrated with the system EMS. An automatic voltage regulator provides the full range of voltage control and reactive power supply functions, while a digital governor with a programmable frequency droop characteristic provides the full range of frequency regulation service.
Both wind and solar plants provide a disturbance ride-through capability better than that required by NERC PRC 024-1 and a wind plant can provide a synthetic inertial (or fast frequency) response capability equivalent to a synchronous inertial response of a conventional synchronous machine. All of these features have been proven in field tests and will be discussed during this panel presentation at the 2016 IEEE PES T&D Conference & Expo.
