IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 22, NO.

3, JUNE 2012

5701904

Compensation for the Power Fluctuation of the

Large Scale Wind Farm Using Hybrid Energy
Storage Applications
Hansang Lee, Byoung Yoon Shin, Sangchul Han, Seyong Jung, Byungjun Park, and
Gilsoo Jang, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractThis paper proposes an application of superconducting flywheel energy storages (SFESs) to compensate the
power fluctuation of the large scale wind farm. Based on the
global interest against global warming, the power capacity of
the renewable generation, especially wind generation, has been
increased steeply. However, since wind generations depend on
the natural wind speed completely, the power output cannot be
controlled. The power fluctuation caused by the non-controllable
output characteristic may create voltage problem for local system
and frequency problem for whole power system. To solve those
problems, the hybrid application of the large-capacity battery
energy storage system (BESS) and the high-speed superconducting flywheel energy storage system (SFES) are considered in
Heangwon wind farm in Cheju Island in Korea. Through the case
studies based on the site-measured output data, the optimal power
and energy capacity of the BESSs and SFES are figured out.
Index TermsBESS, hybrid compensation, power fluctuation,
SFES, wind generation.

I. INTRODUCTION

UE to the increasing interest in the smart grid which focuses on greenhouse reductions, many efforts have been
made to establish the smart grid on a national scale, including
from the domestic industries and academia. In South Korea,
where the greenhouse gas emissions are 1.6 times the average
level of OECD countries, the necessity for the reduction of
a significant amount of greenhouse gases has been required.
Increasing the utilization of renewable energy is being implemented for the reduction of greenhouse gases where the wind
power is being considered as the appropriate renewable energy

Manuscript received September 13, 2011; accepted December 05, 2011. Date
of publication December 21, 2011; date of current version May 24, 2012. This
work was supported in part by a National Research Foundation of Korea Grant
funded by the Korean Government (20110018632) and in part by Korea Institute
of Energy Technology evaluation and planning.
H. Lee was with the School of Electrical Engineering, Korea University,
Seoul 136713, Korea. He is now with the School of Railway and Electrical Engineering, Kyungil University, Gyeongsan 712701, Korea (e-mail:
hsang80@korea.ac.kr).
B. Y. Shin and G. Jang are with the School of Electrical Engineering,
Korea University, Seoul 136-713, Korea (e-mail: shinby@korea.ac.kr;
gjang@korea.ac.kr).
S. Han, S. Jung, and B. Park are with the Korea Electric Power Research Institute, Daejon 305-760, Korea (e-mail: schan@kepri.re.kr;
shammon@kepri.re.kr; hampstead@kepri.re.kr).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TASC.2011.2180881

sources in terms of efficiency and economical aspects [1][4].

The scale of wind farms have been increasing and large-scale
wind farms have already been constructed and under operation
and additional sites is planned.
However, wind power has intermittent output characteristics,
which makes it difficult to maintain stable outputs, thereby
requiring many issues to be addressed when the large-scale
wind farms are linked to the system [5]. Since the fundamental
problem caused by the connection of wind power is the intermittence in the power output, technology developed for
stabilizing the wind power output will be beneficial for the
dissemination of wind power.
Measures to suppress the effects on the grid owing to the
output change are being studied from various aspects, out of
which utilizing the energy storage technology is available. The
flywheel, the object of the study in this paper, is an energy
storage device that stores mechanical energy utilizing the
rotational inertia of the rotor, where superconducting bearings
are being applied to eliminate the thermal losses due to the
friction in the pivot bearings [6]. The main advantage of these
flywheel storage devices is that the response rate and efficiency
is relatively high. In terms of electrical characteristics, the
SFES(Superconductor Flywheel Energy Storage), depending
on the design of the rotor, has an advantage of implementing a
high storage capacity since the rotating mass can be increased
for the same mass, but also has the disadvantage that the
instantaneous output is not very high since it utilizes devices
with permanent magnet in the rotor to eliminate the loss due to
the magnetic coupling in the device [7][9].
This paper proposes a measure to compensate the output of
Cheju Islands Heangwon wind farm by utilizing a super- conducting flywheel, which has a quick response and low power
capacity, and a battery energy storage system, which has a comparatively lower response capability and high power capacity
when compared to the flywheel. The paper is constituted as follows: Chapter II gives a description of the Heangwon wind farm,
Chapter III describes the SFES and BESS models, Chapter IV
addresses the case studies and finally Chapter V includes the
analysis, conclusions and recommendations.
II. HEANGWON WIND FARM IN CHEJU ISLAND
Heangwon wind farm is located in Cheju Island with a capacity of 9.795 MW and a total of 15 units as shown in Table I.
Owing to Cheju Islands favorable wind resources, a relatively
larger proportion of wind power is being installed. However,

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 22, NO. 3, JUNE 2012

TABLE I
GENERATOR CONFIGURATION OF HEANGWON WIND FARM

Fig. 4. Compensating operation of BESS.

Fig. 1. Daily output variability of Heangwon wind farm.

Fig. 5. Compensating operation of SFES.

Fig. 2. Battery model and controller set.

BESS can compensate large fluctuations whereas the SFES can

respond to rapid fluctuations. This paper proposes a hybrid compensation method that combines the advantages of each storage
device to effectively compensate the intermittent wind power
output.
A. BESS

Fig. 3. Grid connection diagram of 900 kW PMSM/G.

since the wind is not constant and doesnt maintain high wind
speeds, there are very high fluctuations in the power generation
as shown in Fig. 1. From the perspective of the operator, these
changes in the output of the wind farms makes it difficult to
maintain stable operation conditions which can cause problems
with local voltage and frequency, especially in areas with a low
electric inertia, thereby requiring the compensation of the power
output utilizing energy storage devices.

In spite of the low response capability, BESS is an energy

storage devices can ensure a high reliability of energy supply
and achieve a high storage capacity with a relatively low installation cost.
As shown in Fig. 2, the battery is connected to the system
through an AC-DC inverter and a DC-DC converter for flexible
charging/discharging characteristics. The AC-DC inverter plays
the role of the active rectifier, whereas the DC-DC operates as
the charger.
B. SFES
The superconducting flywheel utilizes the permanent magnet
synchronous motor/generator. As mentioned earlier, due to the
usage of superconducting bearings, the PMSM/G model, which
has a friction torque of 0, should be utilized instead of the general synchronous machine which generates heat due to the magnetic coupling of the rotor and stator. Fig. 3 shows the grid connection diagram of the 900 kW PMSM/G model.

III. STORAGE SYSTEM MODEL

IV. CASE STUDIES

BESS (Battery Energy Storage System) and SFES are being

utilized in this paper in order to compensate the wind farms
output variability. Generally, since BESS has slower response
characteristics and a larger capacity when compared to SFES,

A hybrid connection compensation method, where the characteristics of BESS that large amount of fluctuations can be
compensated for a relatively lower cost despite the comparatively slower response speed and the high response speed of

LEE et al.: POWER FLUCTUATION OF LARGE SCALE WIND FARM USING HYBRID ENERGY STORAGE APPS

5701904

Fig. 6. Cumulative energy in the BESS.

Fig. 7. Cumulative energy in the SFES.

TABLE II
SPECIFICATIONS OF BESS AND SFES FOR FULL COMPENSATION

TABLE III
SIMULATION SCENARIOS FOR PARTIAL COMPENSATION

Assumption 1: same specifications of BESS with the full compensation case

(3.302 MW & 5.172 MWh)
Assumption 2: power capacity of SFES is limited in 0.9 MW.

SFES are being combined for a more effective compensation of

the intermittent characteristics of wind power, is being proposed
and case studies were performed to show the effectiveness of the
following method.
The simulations were carried out to show the changes in the
output due to the implementation of BESS and SFES, based on
actual output data from the 9.8 MW Cheju Island Heangwon
wind farm.
A. Full Compensation
The intermittent generation of the Heangwon wind farm with
a fluctuation range of 4.5 MW is being shown in Fig. 1. This
change in the wind power output can result in the fluctuation

Fig. 8. Remained output fluctuation for each storage capacity of SFES.

of the system frequency and the voltage of the adjacent areas.

To solve these problems, to supply the system a fixed output of
1 MW by utilizing the full compensation scenario of BESS and
SFES, the instantaneous and storage capacity of each storage
device was calculated.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 22, NO. 3, JUNE 2012

TABLE IV
SIMULATION RESULTS FOR PARTIAL COMPENSATION SCENARIOS

the increase of the SFES energy capacity. Also the difference

of the maximum and minimum power output of wind farm is
decreased significantly. This means that when there is sufficient
storage capacity for SFES, the minute output fluctuations can
be rectified thereby facilitating the connections of wind farms
to the grid.
V. CONCLUSION

As shown in Figs. 4 and 5, BESS compensates the large fluctuations and SFES compensates for the small and fast fluctuation for the reference output (setpoint) of the Heangwon wind
farm. BESS uses its large storage capacity to compensate the
wind power output but doesnt have the fast response capability
to follow rapidly changing output thereby requiring additional
compensation of SFES. The storage capacity of BESS and SFES
is being calculated by the difference of the maximum and minimum values of the accumulated energy from the full compensation scenario as shown in Figs. 6 and 7. Table II represents the
specifications of BESS and SFES for the full compensation of
the Heangwon wind farm.
B. Partial Compensation
A case study is conducted to determine the impact of the committed amount of SFES by setting SFES and BESS with the following assumptions shown in Table III.
Fig. 8(a) shows the output of the Heangwon wind farm with
only BESSs compensation. It can be observed that the output
is maintained only for the small variations around the 1 MW
setpoint for the actual output of Heangwon wind farm and that
the small and fast fluctuations are noticeably removed with the
increase in the SFES capacity.
Figs. 8(b)8(f) shows the Heangwon wind farm output due
to the operation of various storage capacities of SFES. Since
the energy capacity of SFES is not enough high, it can be fully
charged or discharged for a short time. This means that the
timely charging or discharging cannot be achieved. The more
the SFES energy capacity is increased the more minute changes
are being compensated thereby maintaining the output at its setpoint. Table IV shows the simulation results of each scenario.
The fluctuation reduction rate, which is the ratio of the
number of not-compensated samples for the entire measured
samples, is obtained for each case and listed in Table IV. There
is a significant reduction of output fluctuation according to

In this paper, the wind farm output stabilization measures

were simulated by utilizing the energy storage characteristics
of SFES and BESS. In order to stabilize the wind farm output,
a hybrid storage device scheme has been proposed where the
energy storage device capacity and response rate has been considered to combine the high capacity battery and flywheel device. Simulation results show that instead of only using BESS,
adequately mixing SFES with BESS is a more efficient and effective method for stabilizing the output of wind farms. However, above a certain level, increasing the SFES capacity didnt
show much improvement in the compensation. Therefore, future studies will be required from an economic point of view
for the calculation of the SFES capacity and the optimal combination of the energy storage devices.
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