A Report on 11th Thomas Alva Edison Memorial Lecture

For the year 2007, Delhi's 10th Thomas Alva Edison Memorial Seminar was delivered by Prof. J. Stenzel on the topic ‘Energy Management System (EMS) for large wind farms’ with venue as the Committee Room, EE Dept of IIT Delhi, New Delhi on October 5, 2007 (Friday). It started at about 6.00 P.M. and continued for one hour.

He started his talk indicating that the installation of wind power plants will increase considerably within the next 20 years. The development will principally be carried out in the offshore area. In Europe today, around 800 MW of wind power generation through offshore wind park is already under operation. Out of around 20 plants only 3 have a total generation of more than 100 MW.

Only in Germany 25 plants are in the planning phase and 11 plants are already approved for commissioning. The majority of the planned wind parks will have total generation of around 500 MW whereas around 10 plants may have generation over 1000 MW. Therefore, we can speak they have achieved an order of magnitude comparable with modern thermal power plants.

Today, wind power plants still exclusively are attached to medium-high voltage nets. The operators of the distribution nets are obliged to take on and to pay for the complete energy fed in. But the new offshore wind parks require a direct connection to the highest voltage system of 400 kV. Wind energy can now affect utility system planning and transmission operations. There are still concerns about the impact of wind power’s variability and uncertainty on power system reliability and costs. The question is: “Can we offer the Transmission System Operator (TSO) a power schedule he can rely on?” His presentation shows the proposal of an Energy Management System (EMS) for large wind farms.

This presentation was of interest to all power engineering professionals, who came from academic institutions as well as power utilities and equipment manufacturers. In all 42 persons attended the event.