Determining the feasibility of provision of frequency support from wind turbines

Offshore wind will be pivotal in helping the UK meet its net-zero 2050 target but successfully increasing the proportion of offshore wind in the energy mix will require the industry to aggressively pursue measures to facilitate the smooth integration of energy generated into the grid. There are a range of technical challenges that must be overcome to achieve this, one of which is the ability of offshore wind farms to actively and competitively provide frequency and inertial support services. This presents an opportunity that Upside Energy Limited plan to take advantage of using our existing cloud based platform, the Upside Platform, that provides services to forecast, monitor, optimise, trade and analyse distributed energy resources, on a software-as-a-service basis. This project will investigate and demonstrate the feasibility of using the rotational inertia of a wind turbine in combination with the Upside Platform to allow wind farms competitive access to frequency and ancillary support markets. The feasibility will be established using the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult's 7MW Levenmouth demonstration turbine as a reference turbine. This will involve the development of a new turbine operational mode and integration of the turbine into the Upside Platform via a data transfer interface. Phase 2 will involve a full scale demonstration of the technology using the Upside Platform and the LDT in order to demonstrate the technical merit of the solution and assess the economic and environmental benefits of deploying it.