Abstract
The utility-scale co-located hybrid power plants (HPPs) have been
receiving attention globally due to enhanced controllability and
efficient utilization of electrical infrastructure. While power plant
control has been extensively studied for single-technology power plants
in the past decades, how to control a co-located HPP that includes
sub-plants with multiple technologies is yet to be well defined. To fill
the gap, this paper proposes a novel hierarchical control architecture
for co-located HPPs. This control architecture contains four control
levels: asset control level, plant control level, HPP control level and
HPP energy management system (EMS) level. The objective of HPP EMS level
is to find optimal strategies for market participation, and the
objective of HPP control level is to execute those strategies from the
HPP EMS in real time. The interactions across the control hierarchy are
firstly discussed in this paper, where attention is closely paid to
interactions between HPP EMS level and HPP control level, and between
HPP control level and plant control level. Novel strategies for control
coordination are presented to ensure all the control levels work
together without counteracting against each other. Frequency control and
fault ride-through are two examples to demonstrate such control
coordination.