Rebalancing Needs and Services for Future Grids: System Needs and Service Provisions With Increasing Shares of Inverter-Based Resources
Balarko Chaudhuri, Deepak Ramasubramanian, Julia Matevosyan, Mark O’Malley, Nicholas W. Miller, T.C. Green, Xiaoyao Zhou
Abstract
The primary objective of electricity grids is to reliably meet the electricity demand at a minimum cost. This objective can be broken down into a set of needs that are met through services. These services are procured by mandating them either in grid codes or via market mechanisms. While grids in different countries/regions share common features in terms of needs and services, there are variations arising in physical, regulatory, and policy contexts. With the increased use of inverter-based resources (IBRs), such as wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) power and battery energy storage systems (BESSs), grids are undergoing changes that are altering the balance between needs and services. This balance is crucial in managing changes that will ensure that grids will continue to be able to meet demands. As increasingly more synchronous machines (SMs) are replaced by IBRs, the services inherently provided by the remaining SMs are dwindling, thus requiring the IBRs to contribute where they can.