On December 12, 2022, China Electrotechnical Society officially announced the 2022 Science and Technology Award. The project “Scheduling and Control Technology and Application of Various New Type Resources Participating in Secondary Frequency Regulation of Power Systems” completed under the leadership of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Applied Electronics of Tsinghua University won the first prize of the Science and Technology Progress Award.

Screenshot of the award announcement

Secondary frequency regulation (also known as automatic generation control, AGC) of power systems is an important technical means to maintain power generation and load balance and ensure safe and stable operation of the system. The secondary frequency regulation of the traditional power system is undertaken by thermal power and hydropower units. The installed capacity of new energy power generation represented by wind and solar is growing rapidly and replacing synchronous generators with large mechanical moments of inertia, resulting in a decrease in the equivalent inertia of the power system. Moreover, the output of new energy has natural randomness, which brings challenges to the secondary frequency regulation control of the power system.

Schematic drawing of various new resources participating in the secondary frequency regulation of the power system

To solve the problem of operation control and capacity optimization of new source, storage and load resources participating in secondary frequency regulation, the project originally proposed and realized the main station side control technology for participating in secondary frequency regulation under the condition of degraded output of new energy stations, systematically put forward a new type of regulation strategy for independent, shared and joint energy storage generators to participate in secondary frequency regulation, and created a coordinated control strategy for multiple frequency regulation resources on the main station side and a quantitative calculation method for secondary frequency regulation capacity demand, as well as a new type field station side and main station side control system where new type energy storage and new energy participate in secondary frequency regulation.

Relevant achievement of the project have been successfully applied in the provincial control centers of North China, Northwest Jiangsu and some other provincial grids, more than 10 united thermal power and energy storage frequency regulation projects, and many energy storage power stations with a total capacity of more than 800MW. It can significantly improve the capacity of energy storage and new energy power generation to provide secondary frequency regulation, reduce the cost on secondary frequency regulation cost and improve grid stability.