Net benefit evaluation of wind power considering operational regulation cost of thermal plants for balancing wind power

Although wind energy is one of the sustainable, environmentally friendly renewable energy sources, the large-scale wind power fluctuations maybe exert adverse impact on the system operation economics of the power system due to the intermittency of wind power. In this paper, a net benefit evaluation model of wind power considering operational regulation cost of thermal plants for balancing power variation is established from the view point of the contribution to system generation benefits, which is used to evaluate systematically the net benefit of the output increase of wind farms. The proposed method takes into account the comprehensive benefit of the increased wind power as well as the operational regulation cost of grid-connected thermal plants invoked by the increase of wind power. The simulation results illustrate that the net benefit of output increase of wind farms is closely relative to the operational regulation cost of grid-connected thermal power plant for balancing power variation and is related to the price of fossil fuel and cost of pollutants closely.