Search

Utility-scale off-grid renewable power-to-hydrogen systems (OReP2HSs) typically include photovoltaic plants, wind turbines, electrolyzers (ELs), and energy storage systems. As an island system, OReP2HS requires at least one component, generally the battery energy storage system (BESS), that operates for grid-forming control to provide frequency and voltage references and regulate them through transient power support and short-term energy balance regulation. While larger BESS capacity increases this ability, it also raises investment costs. This paper proposes a framework of layered multi-timescale energy management system (EMS) and evaluates the most cost-effective size of the grid-forming BESS in the OReP2HS. The proposed EMS covers the timescales ranging from those for power system transient behaviors to intra-day scheduling, coordinating renewable power, BESS, and ELs. Then, an iterative search procedure based on high-fidelity simulation is employed to determine the size of the BESS with minimal levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH). Simulations over a reference year, based on the data from a planned OReP2HS project in Inner Mongolia, China, show that with the proposed EMS, the base-case optimal LCOH is 33.212 CNY/kg (4.581 USD/kg). The capital expenditure of the BESS accounts for 17.83% of the total, and the optimal BESS size accounts for 13.6% of the rated hourly energy output of power sources. Sensitivity analysis reveals that by reducing the electrolytic load adjustment time step from 90 to 5 s and increasing its ramping limit from 1% to 10% rated power per second, the BESS size decreases by 53.57%, and the LCOH decreases to 25.458 CNY/kg (3.511 USD/kg). Considering the cost of designing and manufacturing utility-scale ELs with fast load regulation capability, a load adjustment time step of 5-10 s and a ramping limit of 4-6% rated power per second are recommended.

Off-grid renewable power to ammonia (ReP2A) systems present a promising pathway toward carbon neutrality in both the energy and chemical industries. However, due to chemical safety requirements, the limited flexibility of ammonia synthesis poses a challenge when attempting to align with the variable hydrogen flow produced from renewable power. This necessitates the optimal sizing of equipment capacity for effective and coordinated production across the system. Additionally, an ReP2A system may involve multiple stakeholders with varying degrees of operational flexibility, complicating the planning problem. This paper first examines the multistakeholder sizing equilibrium (MSSE) of the ReP2A system. First, we propose an MSSE model that accounts for individual planning decisions and the competing economic interests of the stakeholders of power generation, hydrogen production, and ammonia synthesis. We then construct an equivalent optimization problem based on Karush--Kuhn--Tucker (KKT) conditions to determine the equilibrium. Following this, we decompose the problem in the temporal dimension and solve it via multicut generalized Benders decomposition (GBD) to address long-term balancing issues. Case studies based on a realistic project reveal that the equilibrium does not naturally balance the interests of all stakeholders due to their heterogeneous characteristics. Our findings suggest that benefit transfer agreements ensure mutual benefits and the successful implementation of ReP2A projects.

In a phase-locked loop (PLL) synchronized inverter, due to the strong nonlinear coupling between the PLL's parame-ters and the operation power angle, the equivalent damping coefficient will quickly deteriorate while the power angle is close to 90{\deg} under an ultra-weak grid, which causes the synchronous instability. To address this issue, in this letter, a pure integral-type phase-locked loop (IPLL) with a damping branch is proposed to replace the traditional PI-type PLL. The equivalent damping coefficient of an IPLL-synchronized inverter is decoupled with the steady-state power angle. As a result, the IPLL-synchronized inverter can stably operate under an ultra-weak grid when the equilibrium point exists. Finally, time-domain simulation results verify the effectiveness and correctness of the proposed IPLL., Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures

Utility-scale renewable power-to-hydrogen (ReP2H) production typically uses thyristor rectifiers (TRs) to supply power to multiple electrolyzers (ELZs). They exhibit a nonlinear and non-decouplable relation between active and reactive power. The on-off scheduling and load allocation of multiple ELZs simultaneously impact energy conversion efficiency and AC-side active and reactive power flow. Improper scheduling may result in excessive reactive power demand, causing voltage violations and increased network losses, compromising safety and economy. To address these challenges, this paper first explores trade-offs between the efficiency and the reactive load of the electrolyzers. Subsequently, we propose a coordinated approach for scheduling the active and reactive power in the ReP2H system. A mixed-integer second-order cone programming (MISOCP) is established to jointly optimize active and reactive power by coordinating the ELZs, renewable energy sources, energy storage (ES), and var compensations. Case studies demonstrate that the proposed method reduces losses by 3.06% in an off-grid ReP2H system while increasing hydrogen production by 5.27% in average.

In the conversion toward a clear and sustainable energy system, the flexibility of power-to-hydrogen (P2H) production enables the admittance of volatile renewable energies on a utility scale and provides the connected electrical power system with ancillary services. To extend the load flexibility and thus improve the profitability of green hydrogen production, this paper presents an optimal production scheduling approach for utility-scale P2H plants composed of multiple alkaline electrolyzers. Unlike existing works, this work discards the conservative constant steady-state constraints and first leverages the dynamic thermal and hydrogen-to-oxygen (HTO) impurity crossover processes of electrolyzers. Doing this optimizes their effects on the loading range and energy conversion efficiency, therefore improving the load flexibility of P2H production. The proposed multiphysics-aware scheduling model is formulated as mixed-integer linear programming (MILP). It coordinates the electrolyzers' operation state transitions and load allocation subject to comprehensive thermodynamic and mass transfer constraints. A decomposition-based solution method, SDM-GS-ALM, is followingly adopted to address the scalability issue for scheduling large-scale P2H plants composed of tens of electrolyzers. With an experiment-verified dynamic electrolyzer model, case studies up to 22 electrolyzers show that the proposed method remarkably improves the hydrogen output and profit of P2H production powered by either solar or wind energy compared to the existing scheduling approach., Comment: 27 pages, 16 figures

Electrolysis systems use proportional-integral-derivative (PID) temperature controllers to maintain stack temperatures around set points. However, heat transfer delays in electrolysis systems cause manual tuning of PID temperature controllers to be time-consuming, and temperature oscillations often occur. This paper focuses on the design of the PID temperature controller for an alkaline electrolysis system to achieve fast and stable temperature control. A thermal dynamic model of an electrolysis system is established in the frequency-domain for controller designs. Based on this model, the temperature stability is analysed by the root distribution, and the PID parameters are optimized considering both the temperature overshoot and the settling time. The performance of the optimal PID controllers is verified through experiments. Furthermore, the simulation results show that the before-stack temperature should be used as the feedback variable for small lab-scale systems to suppress stack temperature fluctuations, and the after-stack temperature should be used for larger systems to improve the economy. This study is helpful in ensuring the temperature stability and control of electrolysis systems.

When directly coupled with fluctuating energy sources such as wind and photovoltage power, the alkaline electrolysis (AEL) in a power-to-hydrogen (P2H) system is required to operate flexibly by dynamically adjusting its hydrogen production rate. The flex-ibility characteristics, e.g., loading range and ramping rate, of an AEL system are significantly influenced by some parameters re-lated to the dynamic processes of the AEL system. These parame-ters are usually difficult to measure directly and may even change with time. To accurately evaluate the flexibility of an AEL system in online operation, this paper presents a Bayesian Inference-based Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method to estimate these parameters. Meanwhile, posterior joint probability distribu-tions of the estimated parameters are obtained as a byproduct, which provides valuable physical insight into the AEL systems. Experiments on a 25 kW electrolyzer validate the proposed pa-rameter estimation method., Comment: Accepted by 2022 IEEE 5th International Electrical and Energy Conference

The operational flexibility of industrial power-to-hydrogen (P2H) plants enables admittance of volatile renewable power and provides auxiliary regulatory services for the power grid. Aiming to extend the flexibility of the P2H plant further, this work presents a scheduling method by considering detailed process constraints of the alkaline electrolyzers. Unlike existing works that assume constant load range, the presented scheduling framework fully exploits the dynamic processes of the electrolyzer, including temperature and hydrogen-to-oxygen (HTO) crossover, to improve operational flexibility. Varying energy conversion efficiency under different load levels and temperature is also considered. The scheduling model is solved by proper mathematical transformation as a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP), which determines the on-off-standby states and power levels of different electrolyzers in the P2H plant for daily operation. With experiment-verified constraints, a case study show that compared to the existing scheduling approach, the improved flexibility leads to a 1.627% profit increase when the P2H plant is directly coupled to the photovoltaic power., Comment: Accepted by 2022 IEEE 5th International Electrical and Energy Conference

Thermal management is vital for the efficient and safe operation of alkaline electrolysis systems. Traditional alkaline electrolysis systems use simple proportional-integral-differentiation (PID) controllers to maintain the stack temperature near the rated value. However, in renewable-to-hydrogen scenarios, the stack temperature is disturbed by load fluctuations, and the temperature overshoot phenomenon occurs which can exceed the upper limit and harm the stack. This paper focuses on the thermal modelling and controller design of an alkaline electrolysis system under dynamic operating conditions. A control-oriented thermal model is established in the form of a third-order time-delay process, which is used for simulation and controller design. Based on this model, we propose two novel controllers to reduce temperature overshoot: one is a current feed-forward PID controller (PID-I), the other is a model predictive controller (MPC). Their performances are tested on a lab-scale system and the experimental results are satisfying: the temperature overshoot is reduced by 2.2 degree with the PID-I controller, and no obvious overshoot is observed with the MPC controller. Furthermore, the thermal dynamic performance of an MW-scale alkaline electrolysis system is analyzed by simulation, which shows that the temperature overshoot phenomenon is more general in large systems. The proposed method allows for higher temperature set points which can improve system efficiency by 1%.

The stochastic differential equation (SDE)-based random process models of volatile renewable energy sources (RESs) jointly capture the evolving probability distribution and temporal correlation in continuous time. It has enabled recent studies to remarkably improve the performance of power system dynamic uncertainty quantification and optimization. However, considering the non-homogeneous random process nature of PV, there still remains a challenging question: how can a realistic and accurate SDE model for PV power be obtained that reflects its weather-dependent uncertainty in online operation, especially when high-resolution numerical weather prediction (NWP) is unavailable for many distributed plants? To fill this gap, this article finds that an accurate SDE model for PV power can be constructed by only using the cheap data from low-resolution public weather reports. Specifically, an hourly parameterized Jacobi diffusion process is constructed to recreate the temporal patterns of PV volatility during a day. Its parameters are mapped from the public weather report using an ensemble of extreme learning machines (ELMs) to reflect the varying weather conditions. The SDE model jointly captures intraday and intrahour volatility. Statistical examination based on real-world data collected in Macau shows the proposed approach outperforms a selection of state-of-the-art deep learning-based time-series forecast methods.

The wake effect is one of the leading causes of energy losses in offshore wind farms (WFs). Both turbine placement and cooperative control can influence the wake interactions inside the WF and thus the overall WF power production. Traditionally, greedy control strategy is assumed in the layout design phase. To exploit the potential synergy between the WF layout and control so that a system-level optimal layout can be obtained with the greatest energy yields, the layout optimization should be performed with cooperative control considerations. For this purpose, a novel two-stage WF layout optimization model is developed in this paper. Cooperative WF control of both turbine yaw and axis-induction are considered in the WF layout design. However, the integration of WF control makes the layout optimization much more complicated and results in a large-scale nonconvex problem, hindering the application of current layout optimization methods. To increase the computational efficiency, we leverage the hierarchy and decomposability of the joint optimization problem and design a decomposition-based hybrid method (DBHM). Instead of manipulating all the variables simultaneously, the joint optimization problem is decomposed into several subproblems and their coordination. Case studies are carried out on different WFs. It is shown that WF layouts with higher energy yields can be obtained by the proposed joint optimization compared to traditional separate layout optimization. Moreover, the computational advantages of the proposed DBHM on the considered joint layout optimization problem are also demonstrated., Comment: Accepted by Renewable Energy

Continuous-time random disturbances from the renewable generation pose a significant impact on power system dynamic behavior. In evaluating this impact, the disturbances must be considered as continuous-time random processes instead of random variables that do not vary with time to ensure accuracy. Monte Carlo simulation (MCs) is a nonintrusive method to evaluate such impact that can be performed on commercial power system simulation software and is easy for power utilities to use, but is computationally cumbersome. Fast samplings methods such as Latin hypercube sampling (LHS) have been introduced to speed up sampling random variables, but yet cannot be applied to sample continuous disturbances. To overcome this limitation, this paper proposes a fast MCs method that enables the LHS to speed up sampling continuous disturbances, which is based on the It\^{o} process model of the disturbances and the approximation of the It\^{o} process by functions of independent normal random variables. A case study of the IEEE 39-Bus System shows that the proposed method is 47.6 and 6.7 times faster to converge compared to the traditional MCs in evaluating the expectation and variance of the system dynamic response., Comment: Accepted in IEEE PES General Meeting 2020

To provide automatic generation control (AGC) service, wind farms (WFs) are required to control their operation dynamically to track the time-varying power reference. Wake effects impose significant aerodynamic interactions among turbines, which remarkably influence the WF dynamic power production. The nonlinear and high-dimensional nature of dynamic wake model, however, brings extremely high computation complexity and obscure the design of WF controllers. This paper overcomes the control difficulty brought by the dynamic wake model by proposing a novel control-oriented reduced order WF model and a deep-learning-aided model predictive control (MPC) method. Leveraging recent advances in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to provide high-fidelity data that simulates WF dynamic wake flows, two novel deep neural network (DNN) architectures are specially designed to learn a dynamic WF reduced-order model (ROM) that can capture the dominant flow dynamics. Then, a novel MPC framework is constructed that explicitly incorporates the obtained WF ROM to coordinate different turbines while considering dynamic wake interactions. The proposed WF ROM and the control method are evaluated in a widely-accepted high-dimensional dynamic WF simulator whose accuracy has been validated by realistic measurement data. A 9-turbine WF case and a larger 25-turbine WF case are studied. By reducing WF model states by many orders of magnitude, the computational burden of the control method is reduced greatly. Besides, through the proposed method, the range of AGC signals that can be tracked by the WF in the dynamic operation is extended compared with the existing greedy controller., Comment: Accepted by Control Engineering Practice

To enable power supply in rural areas and to exploit clean energy, fully renewable power systems consisting of cascaded run-of-the-river hydropower and volatile energies such as pv and wind are built around the world. In islanded operation mode, the primary and secondary frequency control, i.e., hydro governors and automatic generation control (AGC), are responsible for the frequency stability. However, due to limited water storage capacity of run-of-the-river hydropower and river dynamics constraints, without coordination between the cascaded plants, the traditional AGC with fixed participation factors cannot fully exploit the adjustability of cascaded hydropower. When imbalances between the volatile energy and load occur, load shedding can be inevitable. To address this issue, this paper proposes a coordinated tertiary control approach by jointly considering power system dynamics and the river dynamics that couples the cascaded hydropower plants. The timescales of the power system and river dynamics are very different. To unify the multi-timescale dynamics to establish a model predictive controller that coordinates the cascaded plants, the relation between AGC parameters and turbine discharge over a time interval is approximated by a data-based second-order polynomial surrogate model. The cascaded plants are coordinated by optimising AGC participation factors in a receding-horizon manner, and load shedding is minimised. Simulation of a real-life system with real-time pv data collected on site shows the proposed method significantly reduces load loss under pv volatility., Comment: Accepted by IET Renewable Power Generation; 13 pages

Continuous-time random disturbances (also called stochastic excitations) due to increasing renewable generation have an increasing impact on power system dynamics; However, except from the Monte Carlo simulation, most existing methods for quantifying this impact are intrusive, meaning they are not based on commercial simulation software and hence are difficult to use for power utility companies. To fill this gap, this paper proposes an efficient and nonintrusive method for quantifying uncertainty in dynamic power systems subject to stochastic excitations. First, the Gaussian or non-Gaussian stochastic excitations are modeled with an It\^{o} process as stochastic differential equations. Then, the It\^{o} process is spectrally represented by independent Gaussian random parameters, which enables the polynomial chaos expansion (PCE) of the system dynamic response to be calculated via an adaptive sparse probabilistic collocation method. Finally, the probability distribution and the high-order moments of the system dynamic response and performance index are accurately and efficiently quantified. The proposed nonintrusive method is based on commercial simulation software such as PSS/E with carefully designed input signals, which ensures ease of use for power utility companies. The proposed method is validated via case studies of IEEE 39-bus and 118-bus test systems., Comment: Accepted by IEEE Transactions on Power Systems

Thermostatically-controlled-loads (TCLs) have been regarded as a good candidate for maintaining the power system reliability by providing operating reserve. The short-term reliability evaluation of power systems, which is essential for power system operators in decision making to secure the system real time balancing, calls for the accurate modelling of operating reserve provided by TCLs. However, the particular characteristics of TCLs make their dynamic response different from the traditional generating units, resulting in difficulties to accurately represent the reliability of operating reserve provided by TCLs with conventional reliability model. This paper proposes a novel multi-state reliability model of operating reserve provided by TCLs considering their dynamic response during the reserve deployment process. An analytical model for characterizing dynamics of operating reserve provided by TCLs is firstly developed based on the migration of TCLs' room temperature within the temperature hysteresis band. Then, considering the stochastic consumers' behaviour and ambient temperature, the probability distribution functions of reserve capacity provided by TCLs are obtained by cumulants. On this basis, the states of reserve capacity and the corresponding probabilities at each time instant are obtained for representing the reliability of operating reserve provided by TCLs in the LZ-transform approach. Case studies are conducted to validate the proposed technique.