Open AccessMulti‐objective reactive power support from wind farms for network performance enhancement
Author(s) -
Meegahapola Lasantha,
Fox Brendan,
Littler Tim,
Flynn Damian
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
international transactions on electrical energy systems
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.428
H-Index - 42
ISSN - 2050-7038
DOI - 10.1002/etep.1711
Subject(s) - ac power , power control , control theory (sociology) , wind power , engineering , flicker , controller (irrigation) , computer science , control (management) , power (physics) , control engineering , voltage , electrical engineering , physics , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence , agronomy , biology
SUMMARY This paper examines the ability of the doubly fed induction generator (DFIG) to deliver multiple reactive power objectives during variable wind conditions. The reactive power requirement is decomposed based on various control objectives (e.g. power factor control, voltage control, loss minimisation, and flicker mitigation) defined around different time frames (i.e. seconds, minutes, and hourly), and the control reference is generated by aggregating the individual reactive power requirement for each control strategy. A novel coordinated controller is implemented for the rotor‐side converter and the grid‐side converter considering their capability curves and illustrating that it can effectively utilise the aggregated DFIG reactive power capability for system performance enhancement. The performance of the multi‐objective strategy is examined for a range of wind and network conditions, and it is shown that for the majority of the scenarios, more than 92% of the main control objective can be achieved while introducing the integrated flicker control scheme with the main reactive power control scheme. Therefore, optimal control coordination across the different control strategies can maximise the availability of ancillary services from DFIG‐based wind farms without additional dynamic reactive power devices being installed in power networks. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.