An integrated approach to improve the networks security in presence of high penetration of RES

Worldwide renewable power flows are increasing rapidly because of the fossil fuels depletion and of the environmental issues generated by their massive employment. Although “environmental-friendly”, the grid integration of a high number of not-conventional power plants yields not-negligible effects on power systems operating and on their security. In this scenario the development of adequate methodologies able to assess in advance the grid vulnerability levels becomes a nowadays a duty. In this regard the paper presents an integrated approach to improve the networks security in presence of high penetration of renewable energy sources (RES). Such an approach is specifically developed for grid assets thermally constrained: the applications refer to transmission lines but however the philosophy behind the procedure is very general. The idea is to synergistically use three modules of a Decentralized and Proactive Architecture for Smart Transmission Grids Modelling, Monitoring and Control that will be presented in detail in successive works. The contribution of this paper is hence to present an integrated approach to assess the thermal loadability of transmission lines carrying power flows from areas with high presence of wind farms. The latter can be regarded as only one functionality of the aforementioned architecture for smart transmission systems. More specifically, the first architecture module is devoted to forecast meteorological variables and quantities needed to the other two which respectively quantify the wind farms power flows injected at an end of an overhead transmission line (OHL) and calculate the dynamic rating of the thermally constrained asset. Numerical simulations refer to the a real case study: a wide area in the southern Italy characterized by a huge installation of wind farms and a transmission line which sometimes constitutes a bottleneck to deliver all the potential “green” production. This research project is carried out with the partnership of the Italian Transmission System Operator (TSO), Terna, and of the Italian Aerospace Research Center, CIRA.