Pumped-storage units to address spinning reserve concerns in the grids with high wind penetration

The low predictability of hourly available power of wind turbines and their volatile output, cause multiple hardships in the power system which are supposed to be handled by means of keeping a higher amount of contingency and regulation reserve. The intensified reserve requirement along with operational constraints may enforce wind-farms to operate below their maximum available power. It's shown that Pumped-Storage systems, not merely as storage capacity, but also as a high-quality reserve providers make the power system capable to lessen wind power curtailment. It is investigated how increasing the reserve requirement may restrict the overall renewable production and how Pumped-Storage can relieve this restriction. The Pumped-Storage system is precisely modeled based on Siahbisheh, a 1000 MW Pumped-Storage system in northern part of Iran. The soundness of the obtained results is fortified by using actual technical data based on Manjil wind-farm, and other active generating units in Iranian power system, as well as actual prices from the historical records of Iran Wholesale Electricity Market. As well as IEEE 24-Bus test system, the performance of Pumped-Storage system is analyzed on the actual network of Gilan Province in Iran.