An adaptive zone-division approach for voltage control of power grid with distributed wind farms: A case study of a regional power grid in central south China

Abstract

With the increasing penetration level of wind power generation, it is essential to coordinate the dispersed wind farms with the automatic voltage control (AVC) system to take part in the voltage regulation of the power grid. In this paper, an adaptive zone-division approach is proposed to identify the optimal controllable zone for each wind farm. The reactive power generation capability of wind farms with inverters is adequately exploited. A multidimensional V-Q sensitivity analysis is implemented to evaluate the ability of reactive power regulations, based on which an online zone-division method is adopted to determine the control clusters for wind farms. The proposed approach can be applied in the AVC system of power grid to alleviate the regulation burden for voltage stability. Moreover, the reactive power generations from wind farms can be effectively utilized to improve the penetration of wind power. A case study on a regional power grid from central south China is carried out, which indicates that, with the proposed approach the capability to maintain the voltage stability for power system operations can be enhanced with more wind power penetration.