Fast frequency control service provision from active neighborhoods: Opportunities and challenges

Innovations in information, communication, forecasting, and control technologies, along with the high investments to enhance the capabilities of active neighborhoods to participate in crucial grid balancing services like fast frequency control (FFC), have gained wide attention in the research community recently. This paper aims to provide a structured and comprehensive study of the challenges, opportunities, and potentials of active neighborhood resources, e.g., distributed energy resources (DERs) and smart flexible loads, to actively participate in FFC services. Technical details, regulatory requirements, and control strategies with practices in several countries are discussed in detail. Furthermore, the challenges and opportunities for the participation of active neighborhood resources are elaborated and categorized as technical, economic, and other challenges. Finally, a model on coordinated synthetic inertia control (SIC) is demonstrated to examine the DERs like energy storage systems, small scale wind turbine generator, photovoltaic generator diesel engine generator, electric vehicle capability to provide the fast frequency response (FFR). It is observed that proposed SIC framework is potentially capable to arrest high rate of change of frequency (RoCoF) and reduce frequency nadir at different loading conditions. The observations and discussions made in this study would be demystifying for every stakeholder of the energy community.

Automated summary

This paper provides a comprehensive study on the challenges, opportunities, and potentials of active neighborhood resources in actively participating in fast frequency control (FFC) services. It discusses technical details, regulatory requirements, and control strategies from several countries. The study also demonstrates a coordinated synthetic inertia control (SIC) model that showcases the capability of distributed energy resources (DERs) and smart flexible loads in providing fast frequency response (FFR). The observations and discussions in this study are valuable for stakeholders in the energy community.