System, method and computer program product for enhancing commercial value of electrical power produced from a renewable energy power production facility

Abstract

A method, system and computer program product enhance the commercial value of electrical power produced from a wind turbine production facility. Features include the use of a premier power conversion device that provides an alternative source of power for supplementing an output power of the wind turbine generation facility when lull periods for wind speed appear. The invention includes a communications infrastructure and coordination mechanism for establishing a relationship with another power production facility such that when excess electrical power is produced by the wind turbine facility, the excess may be provided to the power grid while the other energy production facility cuts back on its output production by a corresponding amount. A tracking mechanism keeps track of the amount of potential energy that was not expended at the other facility and places this amount in a virtual energy storage account, for the benefit of the wind turbine facility. When, the wind turbine power production facility experiences a shortfall in its power production output it may make a request to the other source of electric power, and request that an increase its power output on behalf of the wind turbine facility. This substitution of one power production facility for another is referred to herein as a virtual energy storage mechanism. Furthermore, another feature of the present invention is the use of a renewal power exchange mechanism that creates a market for trading renewable units of power, which have been converted into “premier power” and / or “guaranteed” by secondary sources of power source to provide a reliable source of power to the power grid as required by contract.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0001] 1. Field of the Invention [0002] The present invention is directed to a system, method and computer program product that relates to a renewable power production facility, such as a wind turbine generated power production facility that produces electrical power that is applied to a power grid. More specifically, the present invention is directed to systems, methods and computer program product for enhancing the commercial value of electric power produced by wind turbine facilities so as to make that electric power as commercially valuable and fungible as electric power produced by other plants such as fossil fuel power plants, hydroelectric plants, nuclear plants and the like. [0003] 2. Discussion of the Background [0004] Wind power is a “natural” power production source that instinctively should be regarded as an optimum source of energy for producing electric power. Wind power does not require the burning of fossil fuels, does not result in nuclea...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0029] A further feature of the present invention is the incorporation of a “co-active converter” that is able to provide substation short circuit power so as to have sufficient fault current to blow fuses or to operate circuit breakers as necessary to protect components connected to the grid when installation faults occur in the network.

[0033] Another object of the present invention is to include a prime mover that may be driven by vegetable oil, diesel, gas or the like to the shaft of the rotating converter in a co-active converter so as to carry out startup procedures if the power grid is completely down, i.e. black-grid start, thus enabling a capability to recover a dead grid as well as to assist in power priming procedures.

[0035] By creating “premier” power that is both reliable in terms of short term variation long term reliability as well as during fault conditions, the electrical power produced by a wind turbine generation facility according to the present invention is able to be coupled via “guaranteed” contracts with a virtual energy storage facility, thus making the electricity generated from wind power as fungible as other types of power sources. As a consequence, by creating the premier power, the opportunity exists for creating a renewable exchange to permit the transfer and obligation of wind generated electrical power in units that can be freely sold on the power market. Furthermore, creating “premier” power and providing a virtual energy storage mechanism for essentially preserving a potential energy associated with that “premier” power greatly enhances the commercial value of that power since that power is now made fungible (i.e., may be bought, sold or released on demand). Thus, unlike AC power produced from conventional renewable energy power production facilities, premier power is fungible, and thus may be traded for power (or reserve energy) associated with another power producer, such as a hydroelectric plant. Accordingly, creating a virtual energy storage facility, enables operators of renewable energy power production facilities to collect energy, which has an inherent market value.

Problems solved by technology

On the other hand, wind power is a variable (stochastic) power generation source, thus not offering power production facilities the type of control that the power production and grid facility would like to have in producing commercially reliable power.

These wind power plants are today planned to grow slightly above three megawatts per unit, limited by a reliable size of the wind turbine, (the “propeller”).

A perplexing task that has somewhat stifled the use of wind power plants is that there has been no commercially viable way, in light of the price of fuel generated by other power plants, to effectively store electricity generated by windmills during periods of peak production, so as to make up for periods when the wind slows.

As a consequence, the capital cost, lack of production control, size, and reliability problems limited the proliferation of such wind plants between the periods of 1890 and 1970.

As a consequence, the use of wind power declined sharply both with the spread of steam-engines and with the increase in scale of electrical power utilization.

Thus, windmills generally were only limited for small scale processes and were unable to compete with large scale steam powered electrical power facilities.

Furthermore, the commercial cost of such wind-generated power was much greater compared to those with generating systems based on coal, oil, gas and hydro.

In a first typical windmill power generation facility, an asynchronous machine is used that acts as a generator but also inherently consumes reactive power from the AC grid.

However, as recognized by the present inventors, there is a risk with such systems, namely where the capacitor bank causes the system to become self-magnetized thus causing the frequency to differ by as much as tens of hertz from the standard oscillation frequency after a fault occurs.

However, the use of this mechanical gearbox increases the cost by three to five times the cost of the generator, also having dramatic increases in the mean time between failure, and mean time to repair of the device, thus not making these designs commercially competitive with the more reliable and less costly fossil fuel power production facilities.

However, as recognized by the present inventors, rotating electric machines, like generators and compensators, possess not only an ability to control reactive power, but also an overload capability which is superior to all types of power electronics systems, especially PWM IGBT (Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor), with very limited overload capability.

However, as recognized by the present inventors, such devices have a very high cost per kWh compared to the sales price and are sometimes used at the DC voltage link so as to balance power fluctuations as a result of wind gusts and wind lulls.

One of the problems with conventional wind power plants is that they do not possess this capability, thereby creating a potential hazard for devices that are connected to the grid.

What is notable however, as recognized by the present inventors, is that electricity from wind power, and the limitation within a wind-variable system, is not well suited with the current state-of-the-art systems for providing power to the power grid.

For example, the risk is high to a wind turbine provider for entering into a forward contract, given the stochastic nature of wind power, and thus the stochastic nature of a wind turbine as a power generation source, that could be expected to be generated by that provider at the time of delivery.

The inherent expense of such systems makes the opportunity to offer power during periods of low wind speed very expensive since the wind power operator needs to purchase the physical assets for storing the electrical power.

As recognized by the present inventors, a limitation with conventional wind power systems is that unless there is some physical media for storing the electrical power at the local generation facility, conventional systems cannot reliably perform in either the balance regulation or the longer term Nord Pool exchange, due to variability of the wind power.

Lennart Soder states that this makes it in reality nearly impossible to trade wind power bids since the forecasts normally are too bad for this time.

Thus, wind power is generally recognized as a environmentally friendly type of power, however not as commercially valuable or fungible as other types of electricity such as that generated by fossil fuels.

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