An experimental approach to energy storage based synthetic inertia and fast frequency regulation for grid balancing

The increasing interest in renewable energy has significantly increased in the last decades. The increasing amount of variable renewable energy resources in the grid, which are connected via power electronics, reduces the total mechanical system inertia. Frequency-regulating resources such as hydropower will become more important in balancing variable renewable energy resources, setting higher requirements on stability and performance to maintain a stable electrical grid. This thesis concerns the decreased mechanical inertia from non-directly electrically coupled generation units. The thesis starts with a description of the grid system inertia situation today and presents two methods for estimating the grid frequency derivative used to provide synthetic inertia and one method used to enhance the mechanical inertia response of a synchronous generator. The synthetic inertia and enhanced inertia methods are tested in a small-scale experimental setup and compared with results from tests in the Nordic grid. A full-scale hybrid energy storage system was designed and built using a split frequency method as a power controller. The results show that a power-frequency derivative controller-based synthetic inertia method achieved an improved grid frequency quality during regular operation in the nano-grid experimental setup. The results are evaluated both via simulations and experimental tests. The results from the hybrid energy storage solution showed the possibility of increasing frequency quality by using a slow run of the river hydroelectric power plants and a battery energy storage system for frequency containment reserve