Trade-off between frequency stability and renewable generation – Studying virtual inertia from solar PV and operating stability constraints

The significant increase in solar PV and wind capacity worldwide has raised growing concerns about power system frequency stability in several countries. One reason for this is that these renewable technologies offer almost no inertial response. However, there are some options available to address this issue. Renewables could now offer virtual inertia. Also, power system operators could impose frequency stability constraints as part of the generation Unit Commitment (UC). These options could potentially have a large impact on renewable generation and hence also on energy costs and system emissions. In this paper, we study two key options improving stability, inertia from solar PV generators supplied by virtual synchronous machines, and frequency stability constraints as part of the UC. We assess N-1 generation contingencies for the interconnected power systems of Chile, Argentina, and Peru. We found that the option of virtual inertia reduces the violation of the RoCoF in hours of high solar generation, without affecting renewable generation. On the other hand, frequency stability constraints ensure non-violation of all stability parameters but reduce renewable generation by 12 %. This reduction increases total operating costs by about 35 %, even when the constraints are combined with virtual inertia and battery support.