Investigating the effects of flexible load in the grid integration of wind power

Since the concerns for energy conservation and environment are growing, renewable energy resources are rapidly increasing, which lead to additional variability and uncertainty for the power system operators. The uncertainty imposes considerable technical and economic challenges to ISOs. According to recent advances in smart grid technologies, Demand Response Programs (DRPs) are expected to facilitate the integration of intermittent renewable energy resources into the grid. In this paper, DRPs are considered as an option to reduce and manage renewable energy resources uncertainty. On this basis, this paper proposes a flexible load approach with the application to wind power grid integration. In this context, and in order to model the reality of the power market, a network constrained unit commitment problem associated with DRPs is presented to clear the market transactions. Simulation results show that utilizing DRPs can improve grid integration of wind power, while making significant economic and technical benefits for the system.