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904 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 16, NO.

4, NOVEMBER 2001

A Comparison Between Chronological and


Probabilistic Methods to Estimate Wind Power
Capacity Credit
Rui M. G. Castro and Luís A. F. M. Ferreira

Abstract—In this paper, the issue of the capacity credit pro- market-oriented sectors, in order to increase the efficiency of the
vided by wind energy conversion systems (WECS) is addressed. overall electrical sector.
A chronological method of post-evaluation of the capacity credit The competition was to be supervised by a Regulatory Au-
is presented and compared with a pre-evaluation probabilistic
method. The proposed chronological approach is based on the thority, created in 1997. Further competences of the Regulatory
computation of the WECS capacity factor (ratio between average Authority comprise the establishment of the electrical sector
and total output) over some relevant time period. An appropriate legislation including the public system tariffs.
choice of the time interval, for instance the peak load hours, Recently (1999), the government has recognized that the en-
will lead to a closer approximation of the capacity credit. The vironmental benefits provided by the RIP and CHP producers
comparison is illustrated with two case-studies, concerning
the Portuguese electric system. The analysis of the theoretical have different impacts. Therefore, they are separated in legisla-
background of both methods and the results obtained allow the tive terms, namely in what concerns the pricing of the energy
conclusion that chronological methods are best designed to assist related services that these producers supply to the grid.
system operators, whereas probabilistic methods, which are As far as the RIP are concerned, their specific legislation stip-
developed within the logic of the public system avoided resources, ulates that the public sector is obliged to purchase the energy
are a helping tool for system planners.
they deliver to the grid at special tariffs, which are to be calcu-
Index Terms—Capacity credit, chronological methods, power lated following a novel method.
systems operation, power systems planning, power systems
reliability, probabilistic methods, wind power generation. The general principle which is behind the new valuation
methodology is the unbundling of the costs avoided by the
public system as a consequence of the integration of these
I. INTRODUCTION producers in the grid.
The RIP are now paid accordingly to a sum of parcels re-
I N THE mid-1990s, a new structure of the electricity sector
was set-up in Portugal. In this novel framework (1995), the
coexistence of the following two electric energy sub-sectors was
garding its contribution to:
• capacity credit;
established: • operation and maintenance costs reduction;
• a public sector, composed by separated operators for gen- • electrical losses reduction;
eration, transmission and distribution, and organized in a • environmental benefits.
logic of providing the public service; What is capacity credit provided by a particular renewable
• an independent sector, in which two subsystems take source? In broad terms, one can say that it is the amount of con-
place: ventional resources (mainly thermal) that could be “replaced”
a market-oriented subsystem, with the aim of pro- by the renewable production, without making the system less
moting the direct link between independent producers reliable. It is usually measured in terms of the installed capacity
and big consumers, the access to the public network of the renewable source.
being guaranteed by the legislation If this capacity is zero, or is considered as zero, then conven-
a “green” subsystem, formed by independent pro- tional resources will be needed to guarantee the satisfaction of
ducers using either renewable energy sources (RIP) peak demand. On the opposite case, some of those conventional
or combined heat and power generation (CHP), and resources will not be needed, and, consequently, some savings
regulated by specific legislation. are to be expected, both from the operation and planning points
of view.
The main objective of the legal framework was to create the Capacity credit is proportional to the availability of the re-
adequate conditions for competition between the public and the newable energy technology. As the wind is hard to predict, the
evaluation of the capacity credit provided by wind energy con-
version systems (WECS) is a rather interesting problem.
Manuscript received September 22, 2000. This work was performed at Insti-
tuto Superior Técnico (Technical University of Lisbon) under a research project In fact, its assessment is still a matter of great concern both
financed by ERSE—Entidade Reguladora do Sector Eléctrico (National Elec- from the public electrical system and the wind power producers
tricity Regulatory Authority). points of view. Moreover, it is becoming more and more rele-
The authors are with IST - Instituto Superior Técnico, Technical University
of Lisbon, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049 Lisboa, Portugal. vant, because the wind power penetration in the generation mix
Publisher Item Identifier S 0885-8950(01)08879-4. is increasing steadily for several years.
0885–8950/01$10.00 © 2001 IEEE
CASTRO AND FERREIRA: A COMPARISON BETWEEN CHRONOLOGICAL AND PROBABILISTIC METHODS 905

Wind is uncertain and, therefore, nondispatchable, which rep- park along a representative time interval, to account for its con-
resents a significant drawback from the utilities’ point of view. tribution to the availability of power in the grid.
Furthermore, they claim that wind energy can never replace con- In this sense, the load factor is a suitable index to evaluate
ventional resources, or remove the need for new of them to be the WECS performance, in terms of the power supplied to the
built, because the wind cannot be relied upon. So, utilities tend grid over a time period. Let us remember that the load factor is
to assign a low economic value to the capacity credit provided defined as the ratio between the average output and the rated
by WECS. output, over a particular time period, for instance, a week, a
On the other hand, wind power producers often overestimate month, a year. Moreover, as this is a nondispatchable power, the
the value of its power. They say that no energy technology can power supplied equals the power available.
be relied upon 100% of the time nor the load demand has a Based on this idea, a simpler alternative approach to compute
deterministic pattern. WECS capacity credit is the use of a chronological method, that
The above mentioned situation fully justifies the need for computes the capacity factor (ratio between the average output
a correct assessment of the capacity credit value provided by and the total output over some relevant time period) [5].
WECS. The capacity factor of a wind plant can be seen as the statis-
In this paper, the issue of the capacity credit provided by the tically expected output divided by the total output, and, in this
WECS is addressed. A chronological method of post-evaluation sense, it is an approximation to the capacity credit.
of the capacity credit is presented and compared with a pre- The calculation of the capacity factor may be performed over
evaluation probabilistic method. The comparison is illustrated various time periods. The selection of the appropriate time pe-
with two case-studies, the data from which has been taken from riod is a key issue in this method.
the Portuguese electric system. The consideration of the whole year as the time period will
disregard an important matter: power is as much valuable, as
II. STANDARD METHODS FOR CALCULATING WECS CAPACITY it is available whenever is required, and this is generally at
CREDIT peak hours. On the other hand, if one takes only the top-peak
load hours, the results will appear hazardous, due to wind
Various approaches have been published in the literature con-
fluctuations.
cerning the issue of calculating the capacity credit provided by
In broad terms, one can say that peak-hours occur at daylight
WECS [1]–[4].
and night hours are considered as off-peak hours. Therefore, it
When a priori conclusions are intended, the most accurate
seemed reasonable to proceed as follows:
way of evaluating WECS capacity credit is to make use of prob-
abilistic methods, based on some load duration curve. The basic • to arrange the hourly load demand in a decreasing order;
principles underlying the probabilistic methods of assessing the • to compute chronologically the WECS capacity factor
capacity credit of a wind plant are standard techniques normally against the hourly load demand;
used to evaluate the reliability of power systems. The evaluation • to retain the value of the capacity factor computed for the
is based on some reliability measure, one of which is the loss of top 50% of the load hours as a closer estimation of the
load expectation (LOLE). WECS capacity credit.
The LOLE indicates the expected number of hours within a
certain period, in which the utility is unable to meet its load, due IV. APPLICATION OF THE CHRONOLOGICAL METHODOLOGY
to some unplanned outage of any conventional generating unit.
Setting an acceptable value for the LOLE (for instance, one day The proposed chronological methodology was implemented
in ten years), allows for the management of the electric system, and applied to two case-studies built upon data available for the
in order to attain the desired reliability index. Portuguese electric system [6].
Adding wind power to the grid, which roughly acts as a “neg-
ative load,” has the effect of increasing the reliability of the gen- A. Case-Study A—Fonte da Mesa Wind Park
erating system; therefore, a reduction in conventional power can A first application of the methodology was performed using
be achieved. This reduction is taken as a measure of the capacity two sets of data corresponding to the year of 1998: the hourly
credit of wind power. average power supplied by Fonte da Mesa wind park, and the
Probabilistic methods are now a mature tool and new tech- total national hourly load as seen from the public system.
niques are being proposed to further improve its performance. Fonte da Mesa is a 10 MW wind park, located at the northern
However, they require a significant modeling effort and a major part of the country and owned by the utility.
computational burden. Two remarks worth to be mentioned:
• At the time of 1998, Fonte da Mesa wind park capacity
III. THE CHRONOLOGICAL APPROACH was around 20% of the total wind capacity installed in
Wind speed varies widely along the time; therefore, to retain Continental Portugal.
as much chronological information as possible, is of utmost im- • The peak load of the national electrical system in 1998 was
portance to capture the proper time-scale relationship between slightly above 6000 MW.
the load and the WECS output. Fig. 1 presents the results achieved by plotting the capacity
Under these circumstances; it seems acceptable to use av- factor of Fonte da Mesa wind park against the total national
erage values, which integrate the behavior of the whole wind hourly load. It should be stressed that the hourly loads have been
906 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 16, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2001

Fig. 1. Wind capacity credit for case-study A. Chronological method.

Fig. 2. Wind capacity credit for case-study B. Chronological method.

arranged following a decreasing order, that is, from the max- A series of hourly wind speed data measured during the year
imum loads to minimum loads. of 1998 at a location situated near Torres Vedras, in the central
The 1998 Fonte da Mesa load factor, i.e., the capacity factor part of Portugal, was taken. Correction to the hub height was ap-
computed for 100% of the hours, was about 26%, which may be plied and the resultant wind speed was converted to wind power
considered as a typical value. using a standard curve “electrical power output—wind speed”
Fig. 1 clearly shows that conclusions based on the considera- of a 500 kW wind turbine.
tion of only the top-peak hours (let’s say about 10%) are mean- This procedure intended to simulate a virtual WECS installed
ingless. In fact, the wind instability makes the results appear to at the mentioned location and connected to a particular rural
be casual. substation. Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that the re-
Following the proposed criteria of retaining the top 50% load sultant synthetic wind power output does not account for any
hours, the capacity factor is reduced to 24%. Therefore, one can outages, nor from the WECS, nor from the grid.
say that 24% of the wind park installed capacity (2, 4 MW) may The Torres Vedras virtual WECS capacity factor, computed
be considered as an estimation of the capacity credit provided after the synthetic power output, was plotted against the total
to the public system, in 1998. national load, using the same approach as described above.
It should be stressed that an advantage of this kind of a pos- The results obtained are presented in Fig. 2.
teriori analysis, is that it represents what has effectively hap-
The load factor of the virtual WECS is about 43%. This ex-
pened. In fact, the chronological correspondence between the
tremely high value is a result of two contributions:
wind park power output and the system’s load has been com-
puted at the same hours. Moreover, the unexpected outages, both • The mean wind speed at the WECS location was excep-
of the park and the grid, have been naturally incorporated. tionally high.
• A single WECS with 100% availability has been
B. Case-Study B—Torres Vedras Virtual WECS considered.
The same methodology was applied to perform another sim- When only the relevant hours are considered (50% of the total
ulation, in different conditions. number of hours) the capacity factor reduces to 41%.
CASTRO AND FERREIRA: A COMPARISON BETWEEN CHRONOLOGICAL AND PROBABILISTIC METHODS 907

Fig. 3. Normal distribution of the system load at peak hours.

The capacity credit that would have been provided by this Now, if and are, respectively, the values of such that
WECS in 1998 can therefore be overestimated in 40% of its
installed capacity (200 kW). and

C. Remarks the wind capacity credit, , can be computed as


It is apparent from Figs. 1 and 2 that the results obtained
from the simulations performed are very different. However, this
should not be viewed as a surprising result. The availability of the hourly average wind speed series at
When only a few peak hours are considered, depending on both the sites A and B has allowed the computation of Weibull
wind fluctuations the capacity factor may vary above or under parameters. Therefore, the Weibull distribution of the wind
the load factor. If the number of hours is enlarged, then the ca- speed at the two sites was obtained.
pacity factor approaches the load factor. Moreover, a Normal distribution for the national load demand
This conclusion complies with the known conclusion of wind was built, considering only the peak hours.
specialists: “wind is random in the short-term, but almost pre- Fig. 3 displays the result achieved for the system load at peak
dictable in the long-term.” hours during 1998. It should be noted that the computed average
A limitation of the work presented so far is the shortness of load demand was 4444 MW; this value was retained as the base
data used to calculate the capacity factor. Would the available power for per unit conversions.
WECS power output cover an enlarged period of several years, Also, the mapping of the wind speed into the wind power
and more filtered results would be obtained, thus diminishing output was performed at the two sites making use of a standard
the effects of wind randomness. 500 kW turbine.
The described probabilistic method has been implemented
V. COMPARISON WITH A PROBABILISTIC METHOD [6] and the results of its application to the above mentioned
In order to assess the validity of the results obtained with case-study A and case-study B are shown in Figs. 4 and 5, re-
the proposed chronological methodology, a comparison with a spectively. It is worth to be mentioned that Figs. 4 and 5 show
probabilistic method [7] was performed. both the computed data (marked thin line) and the respective
The method firstly assumes the following three hypotheses: trend line (bold line).
• The wind speed at the time of peak demand can be accu- All the calculations were performed in per unit values. This
rately described using a probabilistic Weibull distribution. procedure had the following implications:
• The peak demand follows a probabilistic Normal • The computation of the wind capacity credit was per-
distribution. formed in terms of the total installed wind capacity. This
• The conversion of wind speeds into electrical power index is shown in the vertical axis of Figs. 4 and 5.
output is made through a typical power curve. • The definition of a quantity called “wind penetration
These hypotheses correspond to normal practices in wind en- level” as the percentage ratio between the wind installed
ergy probabilistic studies. capacity and the base power. This index is shown in the
Considering that represents the capacity of conventional horizontal axis of Figs. 4 and 5.
resources, the load peak demand, the wind power output, At the time of 1998, the wind penetration level was about
the reliability level at which the peak demand should be sat- 1%, since the wind installed capacity was around 45 MW in
isfied, and the density of probability, it is possible to write: Continental Portugal.
Analysis of Figs. 4 and 5 allows the conclusion that capacity
credit as estimated by the probabilistic method is around 26%
908 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 16, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2001

Fig. 4. Wind capacity credit for case-study A. Probabilistic method.

Fig. 5. Wind capacity credit for case-study B. Probabilistic method.

and around 39%, using Fonte da Mesa and Torres Vedras data, VI. CONCLUSION
respectively.
Although these results generally agree with the ones provided What is the value of the capacity credit provided by wind en-
by the chronological method, that is not the main issue here. ergy conversion systems to the public system? This question
One that would like to know what is the capacity credit pro- was addressed in the paper, by means of a comparison of two
vided by installed WECS in Portugal, would find the results of approaches to the problem: chronological methods and proba-
Figs. 4 and 5 very confusing. This is because an incorrect use of bilistic methods.
the probabilistic method has been made. The main conclusions of the work may be summarized as
The important conclusion that is strongly pointed out by follows:
Figs. 4 and 5 may be enunciated as follows: • Chronological and probabilistic methods are not alterna-
• Chronological methods are best suited for system opera- tive, but are in fact complementary as they address dif-
tors. Providing that enough historical data is available, it ferent types of studies. The first are suitable to help the
is possible to obtain a quick estimate of the capacity credit system’s operation, whereas the later are a tool to assist
provided by a particular wind park. This is important to ac- system planners.
count for the ability of the wind resources to satisfy peak • Capacity credit as calculated using a chronological
demands. method was computed after the capacity factor over
• Probabilistic methods are best suited for system planners. the peak hours, whereas probabilistic capacity credit
The application of these methods is made from the point is the amount of conventional resources that could be
of view of the public system avoided resources. They con- “replaced” by the renewable production, without making
sider a big equivalent WECS generating wind power ac- the system less reliable.
cordingly to an average national wind profile. This is very • For low levels of wind power penetration in the grid, the
useful in planning studies, to account for the statistically WECS capacity credit can be approximated by the average
expected capacity credit contribution of WECS. wind power.
CASTRO AND FERREIRA: A COMPARISON BETWEEN CHRONOLOGICAL AND PROBABILISTIC METHODS 909

ACKNOWLEDGMENT [7] L. A. F. M Ferreira, “Capacity credit at the time of peak demand,”


in Planning for Large Wind Energy Penetrations: Contract no.
The authors would like to thank REN, LTE, and ENER- JOU2-CT92-0109 (DTEE), Electricidade de Portugal, Mar. 1994.
NOVA, all of them part of EDP Group, for their contributions
in supplying data for performing the simulations.

REFERENCES
Rui M. G. Castro was born in Lisboa, Portugal, on January 17, 1961. He re-
[1] R. Billinton and A. A. Chowdhury, “Incorporation of wind energy con- ceived the electrical engineering degree, and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from
version systems in conventional generation capacity adequacy assess- Technical University of Lisbon (TUL), in 1985, 1989, and 1994, respectively.
ment,” IEE Proceedings—C, vol. 139, no. 1, Jan. 1992. In 1985, he joined the TUL, Power Systems Section, where he is currently an
[2] A. J. M. van Wijk, N. Halberg, and W. C. Turkenburg, “Capacity credit Assistant Professor. His research interests are in the areas of power systems tran-
of wind power in the Netherlands,” Electric Power Systems Research, sients and control, renewable energies, energy pricing and open markets.
vol. 23, 1992.
[3] M. R. Milligan, “Variance estimates of wind plant capacity credit,” in
AWEA Windpower’96, Denver, CO, June 1996.
[4] R. Billinton, H. Chen, and R. Ghajar, “A sequential simulation technique
for adequacy evaluation of generating systems including wind energy,”
IEEE Trans. Energy Conversion, vol. 11, no. 4, Dec. 1996. Luís A. F. M. Ferreira was born in Bombarral, Portugal, on June 22, 1953. He
[5] M. Milligan and B. Parsons, “A comparison and case study of capacity received the electrical engineering degree from Technical University of Lisbon
credit algorithms for intermittent generators,” in Solar’97, Washington, (TUL), and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from GeorgiaTech—Georgia Institute
DC, Apr. 1997. of Technology in 1977, 1983, and 1986, respectively. In 1977, he joined the
[6] L. Pacheco, P. Oliveira, and T. Rodrigues, “Pricing the energy services TUL, Power Systems Section, where he is currently an Associate Professor.
provided by the independent producers using renewable sources,” Grad- His research interests are in the areas of power systems control, distribution
uation thesis (in Portuguese), IST, July 1999. planning.

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