Controllable Demand For Electricity Systems With High Wind Penetrations

The objective of this paper is to analyze the design of market mechanisms that provide support for the adoption of renewable energy sources (RES) into the electricity system. Once RES become a significant share of the generation portfolio, the reliable and secure operation of the electricity system is threatened. The underlying question is how to better manage the uncertainty of these RES, specifically wind, in an equitable way, so social planners can optimally operate and contract for energy and ancillary services, and make use of the available network resources, such as energy storage systems (ESS) and deferrable demand (DD). While using storage collocated with wind farms is a supply side mechanism that allows reducing the variability in outputs from RES, the use of deferrable demands actively engages the demand side of the market, , thus bringing benefits in terms of the transmission congestion observed and other system metrics, such as the amount of capacity needed to reliably cover the demand. The adoption of renewable energy sources into the electricity system provides the opportunity to reevaluate the fundamental ways in which one of the most complex engineered systems is managed. Historically, the electricity network evolved to a design in which large scale generation placed far (geographically and electrically) from demand centers produced electricity that was transmitted over a high tension Alternate Current (AC) network. Once closer to demand centers, the voltage is transformed lo lower tension levels, and a typically radial distribution system apportions the electric power for residential, industrial and commercial consumption. In this design, generation followed demand, with the yearly peak demand determining the amount of generation capacity installed in the system. ∗ajl259@cornell.edu, 415 Warren Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853