$25. 002009 ieee 52 ieee

Forecasting and scheduling:

 

✔

 The RPS targets in 

many  regions  of  the  United  States  make  wind  and 

solar generation a must-take resource, thus elimi-

nating any incentives for the wind or solar farm op-

erator to provide balancing energy or install storage 

capacity. The limited dispatchability and intermit-

tent nature of wind and solar generation require grid 

operators to supply the additional ancillary services 

(e.g.,  spinning reserves and regulation) needed to 

maintain reliability and operational requirements. 

For example, according to the California Indepen-

dent  System  Operator  (CAISO),  an  additional  350 

MW of regulation and 800 MW of ramping capaci-

ty will be needed to support the planned 9,000 MW 

of new wind generation capacity. The large penetra-

tion  of  wind  generation  may  also  lead  to  overgen-

eration conditions.

Accurate hourly and subhourly wind and solar generation 

forecasting is needed to allow for other unit commitment 

and ancillary service provision as well as the scheduling and 

dispatch of the required hourly ramping and load following. 

Regional scheduling practices for intermittent resources 

need to be further enhanced to address banking and shaping 

in  addition to energy balancing needs. 

Energy storage, DR, distributed resource management, 

and the dispatch of wind and solar resources could partially 

alleviate some of these challenges.