Black-start and island operation of wind farms in Sweden – Pre-study and initial analysis
Electric power systems are the essential infrastructure of every country that supports more or less every aspect of modern societies. As such, their reliable and resilient operation is prerequisite for industrial development, energy transition and electrification of society. In the recent years, the power system operation has been supported by more and more actors using the grid including distributed generation such as wind farms. With unpredictable geopolitical developments and more frequent extreme weather events (due to global warming), the reliable system operation may become jeopardized. In the rare cases when the electric power systems blackouts, it is extremely important that they are restored as fast as possible.
The Nordic power system has in the past had certain plans for dealing with a potential grid collapse and its following restoration. This involves starting up certain hydro plants and stepwise energizing the grid from the north. However, the potential from large windfarms in primarily south has not been considered so far. This project addresses this, by setting up the grounds for considering wind farms in the black-starts, system restoration and energization of the islanded parts of the electricity grid.
To unlock this possibly new capability of wind farms in Sweden, the aim of this project is to gather international knowledge and experiences from similar studies and projects. Furthermore, through collaboration with Swedish wind industry and academia, the project will collect the data and develop Swedish test case models where initial assessments of wind farms island operations, black start capabilities and their participation in the grid restoration efforts can be done.
The models will be made open source (available through GitLab and DiVA) and shared with researchers and academia to foster the work on this topic in Sweden. Finally, based on the collected knowledge and experience as well as initial results obtained from developed test models, main challenges of using black start capabilities of wind farms will be identified and future research and development directions will be proposed.
Aim and overall goals
The aim of the project is to collect the knowledge and create a ”stepping stone” for future studies and research on feasibility of using Swedish wind farms in islanded parts of the grid and supporting electric power system restoration efforts. Concretely, the goals of the project are the following:
Goal 1. Collect international academic knowledge and industry experience and put it into the Swedish wind farms perspective Analyse academic literature, industry reports and press releases on the uses of wind turbine generators and farms in the energy islands as well as for black-start and restoration efforts. Try to learn from the state-of-the -art demonstrators such as the one in Scotland and put the collected knowledge into the Swedish perspective (future Swedish scenarios).
Goal 2. Assess initial readiness of Swedish wind turbine generators with respect to current regulations Assess the existing regulatory framework on black start capabilities and power system restoration and how technical capabilities of wind turbine generators in Sweden fit in these.
Goal 3. Create Swedish test cases from which further R&D activities can be carried Provide academia and industry with basic “test case” open-source RMS/EMT models as foundations for future R&D activities on black-start capabilities of wind farms and their participation in grid restoration efforts in Sweden.
Goal 4. Identify important challenges and propose paths for the future research and development Based on the results of the project identify most important challenges and propose next steps in bringing Swedish Wind Farms closer to participation in island operations, black start and restoration efforts of Swedish electricity grid.
The project collects the information and the international experience on the topic of wind power operation in islanded grids, black-starts and the system restoration and transfers it to the Swedish wind industry. By doing so, it strengthens up Swedish wind industry competence base and opens up new possibilities for wind power to contribute to future electric power systems’ operations by providing new system services. At the same time, opening up the possibility to support the system restoration efforts from wind farms, the project contributes to increasing future resiliency of the Swedish electrical grid benefiting in this way to the goals of Svenska kraftnät, MSB and the Swedish society as a whole.
By making all the project results publicly available, including literature survey and RMS/EMT test models, it furthermore sets the ground for the further research projects in domain of wind power operation in islanded grids, black-starts and the system restoration. Here, project outcomes may directly benefit academia, industry and policy makers.