Developing an Optimal Scheduling of Taiwan Power System with Highly Penetrated Renewable Energy Resources and Pumped Hydro Storages

Recently, Taiwanese Government has announced an ambitious energy policy: Up to 20% of total power will be generated from renewable energy resources by 2025. Under such high-level penetration level of renewable energy resources, the typical net load curve will be definitely reshaped as the so-called duck curve. Operation modes of pumped hydro storage units in Taiwan power system will be totally changed. To tackle out this difficulty, the optimal scheduling of Taiwan power system is developed in this article for examining the coordination of highly penetrated renewable energy resources and pumped hydro storage plants under the required spinning reserve. The associated cost function and various constraints used in this optimal scheduling problem are described first. Physical characteristics of pumped hydro storage units in Taiwan will also be studied. By following the data format in the open source MATPOWER optimal scheduling tool, platform developments of this optimal scheduling program are reported. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme, intensive simulations of both current scenarios and future scenarios are conducted. Simulation results indicate that existing pumped hydro storage units in Taiwan can indeed mitigate the impact of the duck-shaped net load curve in the generator scheduling of future Taiwan power system even under the worst scenario.