Operational impact evaluation of wind generation integration in the Mexican electrical system

Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE), the government owned Mexican electrical utility which serves the totality of the electrical service in the country is in the process of increasing the current wind generation production connected to the grid in the near future. At the moment there are around 450 MW of wind generation located in the South-East region of the country and it is expected to increase to a total of 2,500 MW in the next 2 to 3 years, also in the same region. The problem is that this generation together with about 5,500 MW of hydro capacity generation and some thermal generation has to be transmitted to the central region of the country mainly through the 400 kV transmission system, and there are some transmission limitations which restricts this power flow. This situation could represent a serious operational problem mainly due to the variability and uncertainty characteristics of the wind generation. Considering that the average demand of the country will remain almost the same in the next 2 to 3 years, CFE wants to find out whether the actual transmission and generation infrastructure will be able to support the integration of the expected 2,500 MW of wind generation, or something has to be done in order to avoid operational problems. To find a solution to this problem CFE hired the consulting services of the Instituto de Investigaciones Electricas (IIE), the electrical research institute of Mexico. To attend this problem the IIE set up a strategy and established an action plan where several types of studies and computational tools usage were defined. This paper presents the main results of the strategy and studies the IIE performed to give an answer to CFE.