Wind Power Integration to the Transmission Grid: The Egyptian Perspective

The Government of Egypt has recognized that the availability of reliable power supply is essential for economic and social prosperity and human development as well as for attracting private sector investments in the country. Egyptian Economic reform and growth have triggered a rapid increase in electricity demand. Peak load growth rate averaged 7 % p.a. in 2005–2008 and reached as high as 12% in 2008/09. In response to the rapid growth in demand, the supply capacity has expanded through an ambitious power sector investment program that has been under implementation since 2002. The Government's new energy strategy is aiming to increase the share of renewable energy to 20 % by the year 2020. 12% of this value, i.e 7200 MW, is from wind resources. The complexity of the interconnection of wind farms to the power grid stems from the fact that wind energy is rather unstable and available only during certain hours of the day. By its nature the wind power generation may drop suddenly. To keep the grid operation stable, there is a need to ensure that other power generation sources are available to compensate for the drop. Another common characteristic of the wind farms is that they are located somewhat remote from the power grid. Therefore, the utility has to ensure the sufficiency of power transmission capacity. A rather unique feature of wind power in Egypt is that most of the wind resources are concentrated in the Gulf of Suez and Eastern and Western bank of Nile River areas. This raises the additional issue of the impact on the system when large amount of wind power are interconnected at certain points of the network and not distributed over along the country. The effects of having 3000 MW in Gulf of Suez and 4200 MW at Western Nile River areas depend very much on the local wind climate and the typical hour-to-hour load curve (electricity demand). Some important issues needed to be considered are therefore: how should wind farms be expected to behave and perform, and which requirements should be imposed in order to expect wind farms to support the system? Is it realistic to expect wind turbines and wind farms to behave as any other power plant? What is the Impact on thermal loading of lines/transformers? What are the Power Quality Aspects should be mitigated? What is the behaviour during grid faults/Fault ride through? Reactive power compensation and voltage control…..etc. Grid codes are set up to specify the relevant requirements which have to be met in order to integrate wind turbines into the grid. This paper will focus on The Egyptian approach to integrate wind power to the Egyptian Power System and the important issues related to system operation, stability, protection and the associated technical issues. Grid code requirements for large scale integration of wind power will also be illustrated.