The most commonly used method for including photovoltaic system in the control of system frequency is to operate a PV power plant at reduced power while maintaining a specific amount of available power reserve. Such operating regime, often referred to as de-loaded, can cause additional costs and, consequently, determining a required power reduction becomes vitally important. This paper introduces a method for determining the required minimum de-loaded reserve of a photovoltaic system. To achieve the desired result a parabolic approximation of the system frequency response is developed to derive an explicit function of the frequency nadir. Taking this approximation into consideration, a method for determining the required minimum de-loaded margin was developed and tested in a case-study which observed a small power system consisting of several power plants. To demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed parabolic approximation, the calculated approximate values of the frequency nadir were compared to the values of the frequency nadir obtained from the frequency response simulations performed on the power system model developed in MATLAB/Simulink.

This paper presents a high-level overview of the integration of renewable energy sources (RES), primarily wind and solar, into the electric power system (EPS) in Croatia. It presents transmission system integration aspects for the particular case of this country. It explains the current situation and technical characteristics of the current conventional generation units and currently installed wind energy capacities. Based on the current situation future development scenario is determined and used to evaluate the impacts of the wide-scale integration of renewables. Grid connections aspects, power balancing, market participation, and inertia reduction aspects are considered. Furthermore, some specifics of both solar and wind integration are discussed identifying problems and potential solutions. Primarily through the provision of the inertial response of both solar and wind and through better forecasting of wind production. Finally, the outlook for the Croatian power system is given, that will most probably double its RES capacity in the coming 3-year period and a certain level of investments and changes of current operational practices will need to be provided.

In a power system with a high-share of photovoltaic systems, the frequency response can be improved by the participation of photovoltaics in frequency control. If the photovoltaic system operates at reduced power, in a so-called de-loaded mode, and maintains a specific amount of power reserve, then participation in system frequency control is usually realized by a droop control method. The implementation of this method is very simple, but it does not provide the recovery of PV power reserve before the secondary frequency control reacts. This means the PV system cannot provide additional support to the grid if a new disturbance occurs in a short time following the first one. This paper presents a novel approach for PV system control in providing support to system frequency. The novel control algorithm aims to enable rapid recovery of PV power reserve which makes the PV system capable of providing support to the cascading disturbance events. The development of such PV system control model is based on a detailed mathematical analysis of the dynamic frequency response. The effectiveness of the proposed method was tested on a two-area multi-machine power system model and through 4 different study cases.

By integrating the new production technologies into the electric power system (EPS) which are mainly inverter-based, the characteristics of the conventional bulk EPS are significantly changed leading to a reduction of synchronous inertia which causes faster frequency dynamics. Synchronous inertia directly affects the maximum value of the rate of change of frequency (ROCOF). The importance of ROCOF is vital: ROCOF is the main parameter for Loss of Mains relay, it is used as an input parameter for Fast Frequency Response and Synthetic Inertial Response control algorithms and can be used as a metric parameter for underfrequency load shedding. In this paper, the importance of ROCOF in the inverter rich EPS will be described in detail, different grid code versions concerning ROCOF will be presented and the results of ROCOF analysis in Croatian EPS with respect to the future renewable energy source (RES) share scenarios will be shown.