Frequency regulation in adaptive virtual inertia and power reserve control with high PV penetration by probabilistic forecasting

The large-scale deployment of sustainable energy sources has become a mandatory goal to reduce pollution from electricity production. As photovoltaic (PV) plants replace conventional synchronous generators (SGs), their significant inherent rotational inertia characteristics are reduced. The high penetration of PV results in reduced system inertia, leading to system frequency instability. Virtual inertial control (VIC) technology has attracted increasing interest because of its ability to mimic inertia. Adoption of the energy storage system (ESS) is hindered by the high cost, although it can be used to provide virtual inertia. The determined forecast gives PVs the ability to reserve power before shading and compensate the power when a system power drop occurs, which can increase system inertia. Nevertheless, it has forecast errors and energy waste in a stable state. To improve the stability of the microgrid and improve the ESS efficiency, this study proposes an adaptive forecasting-based (AFB) VIC method using probabilistic forecasts. The adaptive power reserve and virtual inertia control are proposed to reduce energy waste and increase system inertia. The simulation results reveal that the proposed method has adaptive system inertia to reduce the reserved power, required ESS power capacity, and battery aging.