Assessment of Wind Power Integration into the Synthetic Electric Grid of Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is working to reduce its dependence on oil and diversify its economy by incorporating renewable energy into its plans, as part of the initiative Vision 2030. A significant challenge in this change is the integration of renewable energy, particularly wind energy, into the existing Saudi Arabian electricity grid. Wind energy offers significant economic and environmental benefits, including reducing carbon emissions and providing a cost-effective energy source. However, integrating wind power presents challenges, particularly in maintaining grid frequency stability during different disturbances and ensuring that wind farms comply with grid codes to operate efficiently within the system. To perform tests for the effectiveness of wind integration, an adaptive synthetic Saudi electric grid model was built based on data of the Saudi power grid collected from open source data, designed to simulate the transient dynamics of a Saudi power grid, in order to enable simulation and assessment of wind energy integration into the electricity system of Saudi Arabia. For higher accuracy and details, the model created by CURENT Large-scale Testbed (LTB) and its ANDES package.

Regarding wind energy, data on wind resources in Saudi Arabia support the conclusion that many areas of the Kingdom are ideal for the installation of wind farms. As a result, future wind resources have been designed to assess and comply with regulations of the grid code. They also address the specific operational challenges associated with wind farms and the addition of solar photovoltaic (PV) power. Then, it examines how the high penetration of wind power affects the frequency stability of Saudi synthetic electric grids by evaluating how the system performs for several penetration levels in different regions when different disturbances are applied. Finally, the dissertation evaluates potential mitigation strategies to enhance grid stability, with a focus on integrating battery energy storage systems (BESS) and adjusting control synchronous machines. Thus, the results of this dissertation provide initial insight into the future integration of wind energy into the Saudi electric grid.