Power quality aspects in a wind power plant

Abstract

Like conventional power plants, wind power plants must provide the power quality required to ensure the stability and reliability of the power system it is connected to and to satisfy the customers connected to the same grid. When wind energy development began, wind power plants were very small, ranging in size from under one megawatt to tens megawatts with less than 100 turbines in each plant. Thus, the impact of wind power plant on the grid was very small, and any disturbance within or created by the plant was considered to be in the noise level. In the past 30 years, the size of wind turbines and the size of wind power plants have increased significantly. Notably, in Tehachapi, California, the amount of wind power generation has surpassed the infrastructure for which it was designed. At the same time, the lack of rules, standards, and regulations during early wind development has proven to be an increasing threat to the stability and power quality of the grid connected to a wind power plant. Fortunately, many new wind power plants are equipped with state of the art technology, which enables them to provide good service while producing clean power for the grid. The advances in power electronics have allowed many power system applications to become more flexible and to accomplish smoother regulation. Applications such as reactive power compensation, static transfer switches, energy storage, and variable-speed generations are commonly found in modern wind power plants. Although many operational aspects affect wind power plant operation, this paper, focuses on power quality. Because a wind power plant is connected to the grid, it is very important to understand the sources of disturbances that affect the power quality. In general, the voltage and frequency must be kept as stable as possible. The voltage and current distortions created by harmonics are also discussed in this paper as self-excitation, which may occur in a wind power plant due to loss of line