Dynamic Operation of a Storage Power Plant (SPP)

with Voltage Angle Control as Ancillary Service

Paul Gerdun, Nayeemuddin Ahmed, Vinaykumar Vernekar, Martin Töpfer, Harald Weber
Electrical Energy Supply (EEV), Institute for Electrical Power Engineering (IEE)
University of Rostock
Rostock, Germany
{paul.gerdun, nayeemuddin.ahmed, vinaykumar.vernekar, martin.toepfer, harald.weber}@uni-rostock.de

Abstract—It is expected that in the near future, the electri- Depending on its principle a storage type has different
cal power supply networks will be significantly revolutionized. advantages and disadvantages. Flywheels and Supercapacitors
Today’s conventional power plant structures will give way to have high charge and discharge rates, but, due to their sizes,
a novel, inertia independent (free from rotating masses) power
plant system. Such power stations, called storage power plants, are impractical long-term energy storages [9]. In comparison to
will possess storages for different generation speed together with supercapacitors, battery energy storages have a higher energy
power electronic converters. They will be able to integrate and density but a much slower response [10]. Hydrogen storages
store energy from renewable sources. Since such a system will can be used to store large magnitudes of energy but due to the
not possess any flywheels or rotating masses, thus frequency electrochemical reactions via a fuel cell or electrolyser their
control as utilized in conventional power plants will be redundant.
All the control principles necessary involving spinning reserve, response is even slower. A combination of these elements,
primary and secondary control depending on frequency will though, will not only compensate for the shortcomings of
be substituted by a comprehensive angle control of the nodal these individual storage types but also assist in exploiting their
voltages in the transmission and distribution network. However, advantages. Hence, such an interconnected system is presented
to be deemed truly feasible, these storage power plants must in this paper, called Storage Power Plant (SPP).
be able to function efficiently when they are integrated with
conventional power plants and renewable energy sources. Thus, In the future, with most of the traditional power plants
in this paper, these power plants are connected with conventional (possessing rotating masses) being replaced by an increasing
thermal and hydroelectric power stations as well as wind power number of converters in the grid, a frequency independent
plants, in a single network, and their dynamic behavior is studied governing principle can be used. Such a form of ancillary
under nodal voltage angle control as the ancillary service.
service is called Voltage Angle Control [11]–[13]. The SPP to
Index Terms—ancillary, inertia, nodal voltage angle, primary
control, secondary control, spinning reserve, storage be deemed truly feasible has to function efficiently with CPP
in both present and future day scenarios. Thus, the goal of this
I. I NTRODUCTION paper is to show the coherent operation of CPP and SPP in a
nodal voltage angle controlled grid.
Currently, 14.8% of Germany’s gross final energy consump-
tion (approximately 2500 TWh) originates from renewable II. I NVESTIGATED N ETWORK S TRUCTURE
energy sources (RES) [1]. The aim of the EU 2020 energy
strategy is to raise this share to 18% with future targets project- The example network on which the investigations are carried
ing it to be around 60% by the year 2050 [2]–[5]. Such high out is shown in Fig. 1. The grid consists of 25 equidistant
penetration of renewable energy (wind and solar), although nodes, each connected to either a power plant or a load. The
necessary, introduces additional challenges in ensuring stabil- nodes are interconnected via transmission lines, each 250 km
ity and reliability of the electrical grid. The ever increasing long and at a voltage level of 110 kV. The line impedances
feed in from these RES leads to higher frequency fluctuations, are equal in magnitude with a resistance to reactance ratio
presence of harmonics as well as increased forecast errors due of 0.1. Such a squared grid is used to easily highlight the
to their intermittent nature [6]. power production principles when the electrical network is
The difference between the varying electrical energy gener- governed by nodal voltage angle control. This will become
ation from RES and consumption by loads leads to an energy more apparent once Fig. 3 is analyzed.
deficit or surplus in the grid. At present, conventional power There are eleven power plants, of which five are slack SPPs
plants (CPP) have to compensate for this disparity. However, (S), i.e. converters at terminals where the voltage magnitude
in the future, the number of these CPP, especially coal fired (|V |) and angle (φu ) are kept constant. Out of the other six
power plants, will decrease significantly to fulfill energy sector power plants, four represent wind power plants (W ), while
targets [7]. Thus, Electrical Energy Storage (EES) systems are the other two each represent a conventional hydroelectric (H)
regarded as viable alternatives to compensate for the intermit- and thermal (T ) power plant. At these PV terminals, the active
tent and decentralized RES, so that the network demand can power (P ) and voltage magnitude (|V |) are controlled. The
be met at all times [8]. remaining 14 nodes are each connected to a PQ consumer i.e.

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 that they are storing power as per the network requirement.
Each load also consumes 3.33 MVAR of reactive power
which is supplied later by the power plants. Unfortunately, the
reactive power results and control methods are not included
in this paper due to space constraints. However, it can be
mentioned that the system has an improved relation between
reactive power and voltage (Q-V characteristic) under the
voltage angle control method due to the voltage stabilizing
ability of the slacks.
III. I NTERNAL SPP S TRUCTURE
As seen in Fig. 2, the SPP consists of three main stor-
ages, namely the supercapacitor, battery and hydrogen stor-
age. These storages have different energy capacities and are
responsible for providing either inertial, primary or secondary
control. There are DC-DC converters positioned between
the storages which control the power flow between them.
All components operate in DC mode. Therefore, the power
plant uses a DC-AC converter for grid connection. The SPP
structure used in the software, models the control scheme of
the DC-DC converters which govern the power flow between
the SPP storage components. The components themselves are
Fig. 1. 25 node example network represented by simplified ideal models.
The first storage, i.e. the supercapacitor, is directly con-
nected to the DC-AC grid converter. In case of a network
loads at terminals where the active (P ) and reactive power (Q) disturbance, it immediately supplies inertial power to the grid
being consumed are known. or stores it from the grid. It can instantaneously charge and
The network modeling and simulations are carried out in the discharge with high power and additionally has an almost
software DIgSILENT PowerFactory. The base power value of infinite lifetime because of its electrostatic storage principal.
the per-unit-system is 10 MVA. It is assumed that each of the This makes it the ideal type of storage for its task of providing
14 loads consumes 10 MW of active power. The total deficit of inertial control. Hence, its behavior is analogous to the rotating
140 MW is equally satisfied by the two conventional and four mass in a turbine shaft of a conventional thermal power plant.
wind power plants, each producing almost 23.3 MW to meet The second storage, i.e. the battery, connected in parallel to
this demand. The SPPs are initially kept at a working point the supercapacitor, supplies or stores primary control power,
of 0 MW. Thus, a positive power output would correspond in order to compensate for the low power density of the
to SPPs supplying power, while a negative value would mean supercapacitor. This process is controlled by the DC-DC

Fig. 2. Working principle of the internal components of a storage power plant (SPP)

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converter between these two components. In contrast to a 0.40
supercapacitor, the battery is optimally suited for the purpose [pu]
to provide primary control power because of its electrochem-
0.30
ical energy storage principle which allows it to possess a
higher energy storage density and a preferably lower charging
and discharging gradient, to improve its lifetime. Thereby, it 0.20
represents the equivalent of the steam boiler in a conventional
thermal power plant.
As the third main storage, the hydrogen storage is re- 0.10
sponsible for supplying secondary control power, like coal
in a conventional thermal power plant. Additionally, it can 0.00
store secondary control power. Depending on the power flow
direction, either a fuel cell or an electrolyser is used to empty
or refill the hydrogen storage. The power flow for each of -0.10
15. 20. 25. 30. 35. 40.
these directions is controlled by the DC-DC converter in the
respective paths between the hydrogen storage and the battery. p(t): SPP node 4 p(t): SPP node 11
Each of these two DC-DC converters possess a DC link buffer p(t): SPP node 7 p(t): SPP node 14
p(t): SPP node 25
storage whose behavior is analogous to the steam boiler pipe
wall in a conventional thermal power plant.
Fig. 3. Increase in active power generation of all the SPPs in response to the
While utilizing the hydrogen storage, the fuel cell generates initial step increase in load demand at node 13
electrical energy by the chemical reaction between stored
hydrogen (H2 ) and external oxygen (O2 ). One byproduct of
this reaction is thermal energy which can be used for district in power output is exhibited by the SPP at node 25 since it
heating. Another product is dihydrogen monoxide (H2 O). In is also the farthest SPP from the changed central load. Due
case of a reversed power flow, the H2 O can in turn be used to the resistance in the transmission lines, there will be some
as the electrolyte to generate hydrogen as well as oxygen as losses during the power flow and the total additional power
a byproduct. The hydrogen can then be stored in a Liquid supplied by the SPPs will be greater than the power demand
Organic Hydrogen Carrier (LOHC) system. Such a system increase of the load at node 13.
enables safe, easy storage and transportation of hydrogen at In a network governed by nodal voltage angle control, the
a high energy density under ambient conditions, using the ancillary services are load flow oriented and are provided
currently available infrastructure [14]. In addition to being by the angle controlled power plants close to the point of
used for electrical power generation in the SPP, the stored disturbance. As opposed to frequency control, this allows the
hydrogen can also be utilized for other applications, for power plants farther away to remain undisturbed. These trends
example in automobiles. are pronounced due to the use of a squared grid, as shown in
Fig. 1. In a grid with a non-uniform distribution of the line
IV. S TUDY C ASE impedances, it would not be as easy to highlight the principles
To analyze the dynamic behavior of the SPPs, a sample of power production with such clarity with the SPPs being
case study is performed by applying a step increase followed governed by voltage angle control.
by a step decrease to the active power demand in the load at Next, the behavior of the internal components of the SPP at
node 13 of the network. This causes the power consumption node 14 is investigated to examine how the inertial, primary
at this node to increase after 20 s from 10 MW to 17 MW and secondary control power are provided as ancillary services
and then decrease after 300 s to 3 MW. The magnitude of the due to these sudden disturbances in load power consumption.
step increase and decrease corresponds to 5% and -10% of the
total power consumption (140 MW) in the network. V. R ESULTS AND O BSERVATIONS
In response, the steady state frequency does not change, Fig. 4a shows the active power output of the SPP at node 14.
since the grid is governed by nodal voltage angle control. Fig. 4b illustrates the currents out of the respective storages
Therefore, the CPP at nodes 12 and 19 as well as the wind while Fig. 4c exhibits the resulting change in the voltage or
turbines at nodes 3, 6, 10 and 21, which are governed by a mass levels of these three storages. These trends are presented
typical frequency controlled structure, act as PV nodes and in three different time scales in Fig. 4-6, in order to highlight
keep their power output constant. the ancillary services provided by the SPP and the storages
As seen in Fig. 3, the increase in the active power output associated with each of the control powers.
of each SPP in response to the load change depends directly
on its electrical proximity to the changed load. The SPP at A. SPP Short Time Frame Response
node 14 is located right next to the changed load, i.e. load at The graphs in Fig. 4 show that, like rotating masses, the
node 13. Therefore, this SPP supplies the highest amount of supercapacitor immediately starts to supply inertial power with
power when compared to the other SPPs. The lowest increase the onset of the positive disturbance, so the SPP can meet

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 0.40 0.40 1.012
[pu] [pu] [pu]
0.30 0.30 1.000

0.20 0.20 0.988

0.10 0.10 0.976

0.00 0.00 0.964

-0.10 -0.10 0.952

15. 20. 25. 30. 35. [s] 40. 15. 20. 25. 30. 35. [s] 40. 15. 20. 25. 30. 35. [s] 40.
p(t): SPP node 14 iC(t): Supercapacitor current uC(t): Supercapacitor voltage
iB(t): Battery current uB(t): Battery voltage
iH(t): Hydrogen mass flow as current mH(t): Stored hydrogen mass
a) b) c)

Fig. 4. a) Increase in power output, b) Current flow from the SPP storages and c) Voltage levels of the storages during the initial short time frame

0.40 0.40 1.020

[pu] [pu] [pu]
0.30 0.30 1.000

0.20 0.20 0.980

0.10 0.10 0.960

0.00 0.00 0.940

-0.10 -0.10 0.920

0 50 100 150 200 [s] 250 0 50 100 150 200 [s] 250 0 50 100 150 200 [s] 250
p(t): SPP node 14 iC(t): Supercapacitor current uC(t): Supercapacitor voltage
iB(t): Battery current uB(t): Battery voltage
iH(t): Hydrogen mass flow as current mH(t): Stored hydrogen mass
a) b) c)

Fig. 5. a) Increase in power output, b) Current flow from the SPP storages and c) Voltage levels of the storages during the medium time frame

0.40 0.40 1.090

[pu] [pu] [pu]
0.20 0.20 1.045

0.00 0.00 1.000

-0.20 -0.20 0.955

-0.40 -0.40 0.910

-0.60 -0.60 0.865

0 140. 280. 420. 560. [s] 700. 0 140. 280. 420. 560. [s] 700. 0 140. 280. 420. 560. [s] 700.
p(t): SPP node 14 iC(t): Supercapacitor current uC(t): Supercapacitor voltage
iB(t): Battery current uB(t): Battery voltage
iH(t): Hydrogen mass flow as current mH(t): Stored hydrogen mass
a) b) c)

Fig. 6. a) Increase in power output, b) Current flow from the SPP storages and c) Voltage levels of the storages during the long time frame

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the increased network demand. As a result, the supercapacitor but can also store it. This is depicted in the SPP response to
voltage decreases. To ensure that the supercapacitor is able a negative load change, i.e. load reduction at node 13, shown
to respond to further disturbances, the DC-DC converter in the second half of Fig. 6a. The change leads to an active
between the supercapacitor and battery takes over supplying power surplus in the grid.
the disturbed network demand and subsequently recharges the The supercapacitor and battery behave similarly to the pos-
supercapacitor to its nominal value. The recharging phase of itive load jump, but the changes are in the opposite direction
the supercapacitor is visible in Fig. 4b for the time duration due to the reversed power flow in response to this disturbance.
when the supercapacitor current is negative. In this case, when the battery voltage crosses its upper dead
band threshold of 1.01 pu, the DC-DC converter between
B. SPP Medium Time Frame Response the battery and the electrolyser gradually increases its power
For this primary control, the DC-DC converter uses only flow to the hydrogen storage. This continues till the surplus
the energy stored in the battery. Therefore, the battery current disturbed network power is transferred entirely to the hydrogen
increases and its voltage decreases. In addition, the DC-DC storage. Subsequently the converter discharges the battery until
converter limits the battery current gradient to lower the stress its voltage is within the dead band again. As seen in the second
on the storage device and in the process improves its lifetime. half of Fig. 6c, the stored hydrogen mass increases as a result.
The battery voltage operates within a defined voltage dead
band under steady state conditions. When the battery voltage D. Output comparison between the SPPs at nodes 7 and 14
surpasses the lower threshold of 0.99 pu in Fig. 5c, the DC-DC Fig. 7a exhibits the isolated changes in the power output
converter on the upper branch between the battery and the of the SPPs at nodes 7 and 14, as a result of the initial
fuel cell in Fig. 2, increases its power flow to the grid. This step increase in the load power consumption at node 13 from
continues until it fully supplies the disturbed network demand 10 MW to 17 MW at 20 s. According to the principles of
on its own. Furthermore, the converter recharges the battery nodal voltage angle control, as discussed earlier in Fig. 3, the
and raises its voltage to be within permissible limits of the increase in the output of the SPP at node 14 is higher than
dead band. It is able to perform these functions since it the one at node 7 since the former is at a closer electrical
controls its adjacent fuel cell. As a result, it increases the proximity to the changing load at node 13.
power supplied from the fuel cell, according to the required The resulting changes in the capacitor, battery and hydrogen
power demand of the grid. This supply of secondary control current flows inside the two SPPs are compared in Fig. 7b,
power can be seen in the form of increased hydrogen mass signifying the ancillary services provided by each plant. Since
flow in Fig. 5b. the power output of the SPP at node 14 is higher, its peak
capacitor, battery and hydrogen current, representing the max-
C. SPP Long Time Frame Response imum inertial, primary and secondary control power supplied,
In the first half of the longer time frame represented in Fig. are also greater than the SPP at node 7. In addition, the rate
6c, the consequent decrease in the stored hydrogen mass is of increase of the battery current for the SPP at node 7 is also
shown. During steady state operation the network demand is lower than its counterpart. Due to this reduced gradient, the
fully supplied by the hydrogen storage alone. However, the battery voltage of the SPP at node 7 crosses its lower threshold
SPP is not only able to supply power to the grid, like a CPP, of 0.99 pu later than the one at node 14, as shown in Fig. 7c.

0.40 0.40 1.012

[pu] [pu] [pu]
0.30 0.30 1.000

0.20 0.20 0.988

0.10 0.10 0.976

0.00 0.00 0.964

-0.10 -0.10 0.952

15. 20. 25. 30. 35. [s] 40. 15. 20. 25. 30. 35. [s] 40. 15. 20. 25. 30. 35. [s] 40.
p(t): SPP node 7 iB(t): SPP 7 iC(t): SPP 14 uC(t): SPP 7 uC(t): SPP 14
p(t): SPP node 14 iC(t): SPP 7 iB(t): SPP 14 uB(t): SPP 7 uB(t): SPP 14
iH(t): SPP 7 iH(t): SPP 14 mH(t): SPP 7 mH(t): SPP 14
a) b) c)

Fig. 7. a) Increase in power output, b) Current flow from the SPP storages and c) Voltage levels of the storages of the SPPs at node 7 and 14

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 trol. These power flows inside the SPP are regulated by the
respective DC-DC converters between these storages.
The features of nodal voltage angle control as the ancillary
service in the electrical network were also discussed. To
highlight this, the power output of two SPPs at different elec-
trical distances from the disturbance was compared. Currently,
studies involving the subtransient and transient behavior of
SPPs during short circuit faults are underway. The reactive
power control schemes of the SPPs are also being investigated.
In addition, further research will be required to estimate the
total losses as well as the market compatibility of this novel
system and hence prepare a quantitative comparative study in
relation to the current power system.

VII. ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This paper was made within the framework of the research

project “Netz-Stabil” and financed by the European Social
Fund (ESF/14-BM-A55-0025/16). It is part of the qualification
Fig. 8. Voltage levels of the storages of the SPPs at node 7 and 14 for a long
time frame program “Promotion of Young Scientists in Excellent Research
Associations - Programme for Excellence in Research in
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania”.
This means that the hydrogen current, representing the mass
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