Industrial Involvement in Ancillary Services
A study introducing Ancillary Service Provision Methods which facilitate the utilisation of industrial resources in the provision of ancillary services.
Power system operators employ ancillary services to support a secure and reliable operation of the power system. Ancillary services entail actions taken by participants in the power system on request from the power system operator or actions taken by the power system operators themselves. Common examples of ancillary services include active power output regulation for frequency support and reactive power compensation for voltage regulation. Traditionally these services have been provided by large scale electricity production and network devices such as shunt capacitors. However, the current transitions in the power systems introduce a need for new providers of ancillary services.
Involvement of the consumer side in the provision of ancillary services has been considered as an important part in the development of the power system - an involvement that could bring profit to the power consumers, and increase overall power system efficiency. In previous studies, industry has shown big potential in the provision of ancillary services, both technically and economically. Despite the recognised potential, industrial involvement in ancillary service provision is infrequent in most parts of Europe and in most categories of ancillary services. Lack of knowledge is identified as one of the barriers of participation, both from industries and from power system operators.
The featured article introduces a solution to increase the utilisation of industrial resources in the provision of ancillary services. The proposed strategy is to illustrate in what way different segments of industry can provide these services. Furthermore, the study proposes the introduction of Ancillary Service Provision Methods to facilitate the procedure of identifying potential processes or equipment that can be used to provide ancillary services. The proposed methods have been evaluated through a set of interviews with industries active in Western Sweden.
The study shows that the technical potential from industry to provide ancillary services is large; for example, it has been shown that industry can deliver ancillary services in a wide range of categories - not only as previously examined in frequency support but also in voltage support, system restoration and other services. At the same time, the scale of power regulation has been shown to be as high as 50 MW from single industrial processes.
The investigation highlights five trends in development of the power system that increase incentives for industries to consider participation in ancillary service provision. The interview results also show that the proposed strategy has a high potential of facilitating and increasing the involvement of industry in the provision of ancillary services.
