Thermal generation operating cost variations with wind power integration

The fluctuations and forecasting errors of wind power require large amount of flexibility in power system operation. The flexibility is often provided by conventional thermal generating units. This paper focuses on the variations in operating cost caused by integration of an increasing amount of wind power in thermal generation system. A new chronological production simulation platform utilized for this analysis is described. Different phenomena, such as the efficiency loss at low load level, the ramping cost and the start-stop cost are modeled to achieve a more accurate estimate of the extra cost of balancing wind power using thermal generation. A modified version of IEEE RTS-79 test system and a model of the Jiangsu (China) provincial power system are used to demonstrate the proposed method. The results provide a reference for setting reasonable tariffs for recovering the extra cost incurred by thermal generating units.