Contribution of Photovoltaic Power Systems to Frequency Control.

Today, the grid frequency is predominantly controlled by conventional power plants. However, the increasing installed power of distributed energy resources and the declining amount of synchronous generators make it essential that wind farms as well as photovoltaic systems take over tasks of frequency control. Although photovoltaic systems are able to provide control reserve from a technical point of view, market and regulatory conditions are not designed for them to participate. Due to power electronics photovoltaic inverters are able to react even faster to frequency deviations than conventional power plants do. Using this characteristic, the contribution of photovoltaic systems to stabilizing the grid frequency is analyzed. Therefore, a new control reserve product, called fast Frequency Containment Reserves is developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]