Proposals for Enhancing Frequency Control in Weak and Isolated Power Systems: Application to the Wind-Diesel Power System of San Cristobal Island-Ecuador

Wind-diesel hybridization has been emerging as common practice for electricity generation in many isolated power systems due to its reliability and its contribution in mitigating environmental issues. However, the weakness of these kind of power systems (due to their small inertia) makes the frequency regulation difficult, particularly under high wind conditions, since part of the synchronous generation has to be set offline for ensuring a suitable tracking of the power demand. This reduces the power system's ability to absorb wind power variations, leading to pronounced grid frequency fluctuations under normal operating conditions. This paper proposes some corrective actions aimed at enhancing the frequency control capability in weak and isolated power systems: a procedure for evaluating the system stability margin intended for readjusting the diesel-generator control gains, a new wind power curtailment strategy, and an inertial control algorithm implemented in the wind turbines. These proposals are tested in the San Cristobal (Galapagos Islands-Ecuador) hybrid wind-diesel power system, in which many power outages caused by frequency relays tripping were reported during the windiest season. The proposals benefits have been tested in a simulation environment by considering actual operating conditions based on measurement data recorded at the island.