Application of Energy Storage and STATCOM for grid quality issues

Wind generation is a rapidly growing industry as the wind power capacity grew by 30% in 2010 to reach 196 GW worldwide, more than double the 74 GW that existed in 2006. However, the operational, reliability and economic impacts of integrating wind generation must be addressed. High penetration of wind energy may introduce technical challenges including grid interconnection, power quality, reliability, protection, generation dispatch, ramping requirements and regulation services. The application of Energy Storage and STATCOM can help alleviate the problems encountered with wind farm integration to the existing power system. The intent of this paper is to demonstrate the benefits obtained with STATCOM and Energy Storage for this purpose. Firstly, the paper identifies the power quality and transient stability issues in the Southern California Edison system where there is abundant wind generation. Secondly, paper identifies the path constraint issues in one of the non-renewable regions in SCE territory which has loads that are sensitive to power system disturbances. Computer simulations (e.g. load flow and transient stability) show that the application of a STATCOM and Energy Storage at selected locations within SCE service territory can help alleviate the issues mentioned previously.