Reliability Evaluation of Power Systems with Integrated Large-Scale Offshore Wind Energy

For the future, various developments of the power system are expected. Large-scale conventional generation will be combined with large-scale offshore wind energy and small-scale decentralised generation. To collect the offshore wind energy and to enable the exchange of electricity between countries, an offshore network will be developed. This offshore network will also be connected to the Dutch transmission network. 

To transport the offshore wind energy to the main load centres in The Netherlands and the other European countries, the Extra-High Voltage (EHV) transmission network should be reinforced. Because of the wish of the society to apply underground cables rather than overhead lines, EHV cable systems are currently installed in the Dutch transmission network in the Randstad380 project.

New grid developments like Extra-High Voltage (EHV) underground cable systems and networks for offshore wind energy can influence the reliability of the power system. It is therefore of interest to study the reliability effects of these development to secure the electricity supply in the future. In this PhD-research, the reliability of transmission networks is studied. The Dutch EHV transmission network is taken as a test system. The developed models and obtained insight are however applicable to transmission networks in general. Probabilistic approaches are compared with deterministic criteria in order to find the best method to assess the reliability of transmission networks.

By PhD student: B.W. Tuinema