FLEXIBILITY ANALYSIS OF COAL BASED THERMAL POWER STATION WITH RENEWABLE ENERGY

Abstract

Due to huge cost reductions in renewable energy sources especially solar and wind power over the last decades, these sources are contributing more and more to the decarbonization of power systems around the world. However, these power sources are variable in nature and these technologies challenge electricity systems and thereby decreasing the reliability of the entire electrical grid. More variable power generation requires the enhancement of the flexibility requirements of the overall power system, both on the supply and demand sides. To compensate this variable nature of the renewable energy sources, fossil fuels operated especially coal-fired power plants are required to balance power grids. To meet such operational requirement, high flexibility of coal-fired thermal power plant is being required, in terms of possessing resilience to frequent start-ups (cold, warm and hot), meeting base and peak load changes (ramp up & ramp down), and providing frequency control duties. However, existing conventional power plants, especially coal power plants, cannot easily couple with the variable nature (weather dependent generation) of wind and solar power. As a result, there is a rising level of renewable energy curtailment in some power systems. However, my work will be focused on making existing power plants more flexible in technically and economically way. Since flexibility is the standard that shapes modern power systems, by making system flexible its reliability increases and it can be operated either base load or peak load plant to meet the variability nature of the RE sources .