Investigating subsynchronous oscillations caused by interactions between PMSG-based wind farms and weak AC systems

Abstract

Recently, sporadic power oscillations in subsynchronous frequency range were detected in several permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG)-based wind farms in Xinjiang, China. Given no existence of fixed series compensation in the system, it can be concluded that this is a new type of subsynchronous interaction (SSI) and different from the previous subsynchronous control interaction (SSCI) occurred in doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG)-based wind farms. Therefore, the characteristics and mechanism behind this phenomenon are so ambiguous that further clarification is needed. To investigate this new type of subsynchronous oscillations (SSO) problem, a real SSI incident is reported, and the equivalent model is established based on multi-machine equivalent aggregation. Refined frequency scan and small-signal analysis are carried out to analyse the mechanism and characteristics of such SSI. Time-domain simulations are conducted to replicate the incident. The results show that the interactions between PMSG-based wind farms and weak grids can trigger negative-resistance and capacitive-reactance effects, which leads to unstable power oscillations. To further investigate the influence of different wind power plants (WPPs), two short-circuit ratio metrics are developed, and time-domain simulations are conducted based on semi-aggregation. The potential hazards of this SSI and its mitigation strategies are also discussed and proposed.