A SIMULATION SOLUTION OF THE INTEGRATION OF WIND POWER INTO AN ELECTRICITY GENERATING NETWORK

To effectively harness the power of wind electricity generation, significant infrastructure challenges exist. First, the individual wind turbines must be sited and constructed as part of a wind farm. Second, the wind farm must be connected to the electricity grid infrastructure and the power generated managed accordingly. Due to its stochastic nature, wind energy cannot be controlled; it must be managed. The integration and management of wind power within the highly complex, interconnected electricity infrastructure of the United States presents numerous policy making and decision analysis scenarios. The purpose of this paper is to develop a simulation framework for analyzing the integration of wind power into the generation system of a utility company. An analysis of public domain wind data is presented and specifics of how to transform this data into a compact, efficient representation suitable for simulation modeling is presented. Finally, performance metrics relative to wind effects are discussed.