Huaneng initiates new energy’s ‘black start’ technical trajectory

Recently, TPRI’s youth innovation team proposed for the first time ‘black start’ technical trajectory for wind farms with rooftop PV and battery storage, filling the blank in new energy ‘black start’, and providing technical experiences for new energy’s engagement in the grid’s black start.

‘Black start’ means, after one whole grid system’s dysfunction, without other grid’s help, via the start-up of units with self-start function within the system, drive the unitswithout self-start function, gradually expand the recovery scope of the power system, and finally realize the whole power system’s recovery. As a ‘safeguard’ of the grid, black start is able to accelerate the pace of grid’s recovery at the maximum level, alleviate the socio-economic damage due to power outage. It is an important technology for power grid safety. As for new energy black start, once the grid system shut down, new energy, solar and wind etc., with self-start function, without external help, starts up to generate power, and then, gradually expanding the system’s recovery scope, so as to achieve the effect of normalizing the grid’s operation like ‘a single spark makes a great fire’.

TPRI initially proposed this technical trajectory based on condition that the grid is under ‘black’ situation, and the wind farms’ wind speed are ideal. By using rooftop PV and storage system as the power source for black start, gradually start up wind turbines. After forming an isolated network, power will be sent to offside stations to provide power for power sources without self-start function. Using new energy, such as wind power, as a supplement to theblack start power source, safety pressure of grid’s sudden large-scale power outage will be alleviated, forging a new path for the construction of grid-friendly new energy units. Next step, TPRI will further the works, for instances, the safety collaboration and planning of black start, rooftop optical storage type wind power farm’s black start technology experiment and application.

For now, China has grid black start, as a regular work, one time every year. Black start technology has a broad development prospect. Working on that, TPRI actively carries out research of black start critical technology in hydropower, gas turbines, and wind power and so on, gaining fruitful results. Among them, hydropower and gas turbines black start gains 2 patents for innovation. Relevant technology has been successfully applied to 5 projects, namely, Huaneng Nanshan Gas Turbines, Guodian Hainan Daguang Dam Hydropower, Hainan Tianhui Energy Niululing Hydro Power, YuedianTianyi Hydro Power, and South Grid Tianer Hydro Power. The experiment quality and results accord with grid’s regulations, exerting good demonstrative effects.