A modified unit commitment and generation control for utilities with large wind generation penetrations

A modified unit commitment that would be updated on three different cycles daily, quarter hourly and every minute is proposed. The 24 hour updated unit commitment includes the effects of load and slow trend wind power change that predicts 24 hours ahead. The quarter hourly updated unit commitment handles the fast trend and cyclic change in wind power that predicts 1 hour ahead and commits peaking, regulation, and quick pickup and possibly economic units to handle these wind power changes. The minute updated unit commitment connects or disconnects quick pickup units or wind turbines based on a 15 minute ahead prediction of cyclic wind power variations with periods greater than 10 minutes. The modified generation control utilizes: (1) normal automatic generation control; (2) coordinated blade pitch control of all wind turbines in the array to clip and smooth wind power variations; (3) supplementary control of peaking, regulating and quick pickup units committed by the quarter hourly and minute updated unit commitments. The unit commitment problem to supply sufficient generation to meet load and the spinning reserve, operating reserve, unloadable generation reserve, and load following levels required to assure operating reliability, the generation control problem of controlling both conventional and wind generation to track load are discussed. The inadequacy of the three present alternative solutions to the unit commitment and generation control problem are outlined.