This report details the establishment, validation, technology demonstration, and milestone achievement of the real-time pre-commissioning platform for large-scale solar farms
Report extract
Solar farms need to fully comply with the Generator Performance Standards before they are allowed to connect to the grid and generate power. Therefore, a solar farm owner is first required to submit the solar plant software model in PSSE (Power System Simulator for Engineering) and PSCAD (Power Systems Computer Aided Design) platforms for AEMO R1 (Round-1) Testing, which checks compliance against the performance standards and network stability criteria through software simulation. Later, this submitted R1 Testing software model needs to be validated by AEMO R2 (Round-2) Testing through on-site solar farm commissioning, which is the most challenging part of successful integration. The overall goal of this project is to establish a real-time test platform for solar farms to reduce commissioning delays and significant financial losses. The established platform will not only be limited to validating AGCS tests according to the conventional disturbances, but will also provide the pre-commissioning to post-commissioning tests of the large-scale solar farm under recorded test events. This project aims to:
- Establish a new hardware platform for pre-commissioning the aggregated generator control system of solar and/or hybrid (battery-included) solar farms to ensure acceptable performance before on-site commissioning.
- Develop standardized performance testing of the aggregated generator control system for improving its model accuracy to bridge the gaps between model responses in PSSE/PSCAD software and real hardware behaviours.
- Perform a technology demonstration of solar or hybrid solar farm pre-commissioning to validate the developed pre-commissioning platform and standard testing procedure.
