The value of accurate modeling of coal-fired units in promoting the use of wind power

The penetration of wind power is increasing rapidly in recent years. However, due to the shortage of sufficient flexible resources, high proportion of wind power curtailment has been a serious problem in some power systems. For the power systems mainly consisting of coal-fired units, coal-fired units may have to take more responsibility to accommodate the uncertainty of wind power. This paper evaluates the importance of accurate modeling of coal-fired units in exerting the flexibility of coal-fired units. A compact and accurate coal-fired unit model is presented in this paper, which considers the startup and shutdown power trajectories of the coal-fired units. The proposed model is applied to the stochastic unit commitment with large-scale wind power integration. Numerical simulations have verified that accurate modeling of coal-fired units can better schedule the flexible resources provided by coal-fired units and can thus promote the use of wind power.