Field Tests for the Provision of Frequency Containment and Frequency Restoration Reserve by Variable Renewable Energy Sources Virtual Power Plants

This paper presents the results of a series of tests on the provision of ancillary services by a Virtual Power Plant composed of variable Renewable Energy Resources. The ancillary services provided are Frequency Containment Reserve and Frequency Restoration Reserve, roughly primary and secondary reserve, and the resources used by the virtual power plant were wind and photovoltaics plant for a total of 273 MW of installed power on 17 generators. Renewable dispatchable units such as batteries, hydro or biomass were not considered in order to quantify the performance with the most critical generation technologies. Symmetric reserve activation of up to 10 MW. The quality of the reserve delivery was measured according to purpose-developed metrics and telecommunication failures were considered the main source of errors.