Network Capacity -WP1 Task 2: Impact of Active Power Flow Management Solutions

Abstract:

The Network Capacity research project identified and assessed new technology solutions that could enhance transmission and distribution capacity in the UK. It assessed the feasibility and quantified the benefits of using innovative approaches and novel technologies to provide improved management of power flows and increased capacity, enabling the deployment of low carbon energy sources in the UK. The project was undertaken by the management, engineering and development consultancy Mott MacDonald and completed in 2010.

This document reports the results of an initial literature review assessing the capabilities and impacts on the transmission and distribution systems of Active Network Management and related technologies. This includes discussion of the challenges and opportunities arising. It has an odd structure, being presented as an appendix with no parent document, and withits own appendices.  The actual report starts on page 13, and is 73 pages long.

The report concludes that barriers to deployment, development gaps and challenges, and opportunities for ETI development support are in these areas:

• The principel barriers to deployment of power electronic converterse and distribution level are cost and losses. These are expected to be overcome by advances in technology.
• SVC technology works effectively but is expensive.
• STATCOMS have a limited track record and higher costs and losses
• Barriers to using series compensation in the UK include the extensive modelling required, and the potential for introducing sub-synchronous resonance into the network
• There are no notable barriers to the deployment of phase shifting transformers, which are already in use in the UK
• The main barrier to using dynamocthermal rating is the disruption to existing assumptions and methods in planning and operation of the netowrk.
• Barriers to deployment of active voltage managment include the relatively tight range of acceptable voltages and hte potatneial large impact of generation, the complexity of the relationship between voltages at different parts of a network and the output of connected generation, and the rate of change of voltage and speed of response required.
• Demand side management requires a contractural agreement between the network operator and the user defining the amount of load that can be removed or assigned to the user, the modality of the control and tariffs and penalties applied.

Publication Year:

2010

Publisher:

ETI

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5286/ukerc.edc.000478

Author(s):

Mott MacDonald