Vindhyachal

Ancillary Services

EEMG Deptt.
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Objective of Ancillary Services

To maintain reliability of power system & support their primary

function for delivering energy to customer

To restore the frequency level at desired level and to relieve the

congestion in the transmission network
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Ancillary Service Consist of Services:

 Maintaining Load – generation balance (frequency control)

 Maintaining voltage and reactive power support

 Maintaining generation and transmission reserve

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Need for Ancillary Services

Imbalance handling on the Indian grid has been done by

• Manual change in schedule by RLDCs
• Load shedding in a particular area as commonly done by DISCOMs in
India
• Deviation Settlement Mechanism(DSM)
• Droop characteristics of turbine

This has controlled the imbalance to some extent but imbalance still exists.
There is a need for further intervention.
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• Nodal Agency : System operator mainly National Load

Despatch Center
• Reserves Regulation Ancillary Services Provider : Consists of
either Regulation Ancillary Services or Regulation Up service
• Reserves Regulation Ancillary Services Provider : Inter State
Generating Station (ISGSs) having un- requisitioned surplus
• Regulation Down Service : Ancillary service that provides
capacity that can respond to signals or instruction of Nodal
Agency for decrease in generation
• Regulation Up Service: Ancillary service that provides
capacity that can respond to signals or instruction of Nodal
Agency for increase in generation
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Necessity for triggering Ancillary Service

 Extreme weather forecasts and/or special day

 Generating unit or transmission line outages

 Trend of load met

 Trends of frequency

 Any abnormal event such as outage of hydro generating units

due to silt

 coal supply blockade etc.

 Excessive loop flows leading to congestion

 Such other events.

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Concept of Reserves

Three Types of Reserves/control required

•Primary control: Local automatic control which delivers reserve power in
opposition to any frequency change;
– Provide immediate support during contingency to correct imbalance which
lasts for a short period of up to 30 Sec to 15 Min
– Available as per the Droop characteristics of turbine
•Secondary control: Automatic Generation Control (AGC) which delivers reserve
power in order to bring back the frequency and the interchange programs to their
target values.
– Provides for restoration of primary control reserves and is to be available in
30 seconds to 15 minutes.
•Tertiary control: Manual change in the dispatching and unit commitment in
order to restore the secondary control reserve, to manage eventual congestions,
and to bring back the frequency and the interchange programs to their target if the
secondary control reserve is not sufficient.

Frequency Control requires that a certain amount of active power be kept in reserve.
The reserve for Secondary control is referred to as Spinning reserve.
 RRAS UP & DOWN

• For RRAS UP: We receive Mark-up 0.5

Rs/Kwh along with ECR payment

• For RRAS DOWN: We receive 25% of

ECR.
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Three types of Imbalance control

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International Practices
All large carry Primary, Secondary and Tertiary control reserves.

 In majority of the systems, the full availability of the Primary control

reserves happens within 30s.
Great Britain has a regulation of 10s time for primary response for full
availability and 30s time for secondary response

 Full availability of the Secondary control reserves varies from

5 min. in case of Germany & PJM
10 min. in case of Belgium and CAISO
15 min. in case of UCTE.

 “Fast” tertiary control reserve is deployed within 15 minutes in majority of the systems.
In PJM and CAISO, it is 10 min.

 “Slow” tertiary control reserve is deployed after more than 15 minutes.

In France and PJM, the full availability is within 30 min.
Germany and CAISO have time of 1 hr.
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Operating band for Spinning Reserve & Automatic Generation

Control (AGC)
Band for primary reserves

520 MW
500 MW

400 MW

300 MW

11
Typical Reserve Available on Account of Un-requisitioned
Generation
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Impact of Automatic Generation Control regime on Operating Units

Limitations of machines under AGC

• Ramp up and ramp down rate should not exceed maximum 2-3% per minute or as
per the recommendations of the manufacturer.
• Load variation may be limited to avoid any manual intervention necessary to adjust
operating parameters of the machine (SH,RH Temp etc.)
• In case of sub critical units Boiler Feed Pump maintains the drum level and at low
load its response is not as quick as on higher loads, therefore, such sub critical units
shall be given higher schedule with minimum possible variation in load if brought
under AGC

Impact on efficiency

• Part Load operation would adversely impact the Heat Rate ,APC and SOC.

Impact on residual life, maintenance cost, and breakdown and unit availability

• Due to cyclic loading of machine, thermal fatigue and hysterisis may take place
which, in turn, would affect the residual life of machine. This may lead to increase in
number of break downs of equipments, tube leakage, line leakages, etc. with impact
on R&M cost of machines.