INGENIEUR
INGENIEUR
Battery room
restore a system’ s power balance, whereas the flexibility sources respond to restore that balance.
While flexible resources are commonly found on the supply side, there is also the possibility of harvesting flexibility from the demand side( Demand Response, DR). Large-scale industrial processes and direct control of certain loads have been utilised for many years. Recent advances in information and communication technologies( ICT), together with the large-scale rollout of advanced smart meters, have created a new window of opportunity to make better use of DR to increase flexibility.
The flexibility required can be obtained by scheduling and dispatching certain loads( either individually or as aggregation of smaller loads) according to system needs while respecting a set of preconditions, such as comfort levels. Alternatively, price-responsive demand can be used with price signals that reflect flexibility requirements. An example of the ability of such a DR to provide flexibility is found in France, where six million domestic water heaters, equivalent to 12 GW of potential demand, are centrally controlled to modify electricity demand. Demand response flexibility from large consumers is also used in France to provide two-hour ramping reserve during critical periods.
For the future Malaysian electricity supply industry, VG resources— principally solar power plants, are set to increase significantly as part of the Government’ s drive to promote sustainable energy for powering and lighting up the nation. However, these VG resources will bring technical challenges that require increasing the flexibility of the national power system grid. Assessing these new flexibility needs, the resources available to meet them, and system flexibility adequacy will probably emerge as one significant aspect of the system planning and business development functions of the national utility( TNB). There is no one-size-fits-all solution to increasing flexibility. Options that achieve the technical objective of fulfilling flexibility needs must be evaluated economically so that low-cost solutions can be offered to the customers through institutionalised market access mechanisms.
ENERGY STORAGE
Energy storage systems convert electricity into a form that can be stored and converted back into electrical energy for later use, providing energy on demand. This enables utilities, for example, to generate extra electricity during times of low
48 VOL 75 JULY-SEPTEMBER 2018