Flexible reactive power controller design for wind farm structure under wake effect

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Compact wind farms are vulnerable to wake effects and have demanded a general contrast solution for them. Recently interconnected wind power plants are equipped with conversion device, and not only a detailed switching model but also a phasor locked loop that can extract grid information for control should be developed. METHODS/STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: It is important to determine reasonable reactive power references based on practical reserve because each power conversion system would be on different power extracting condition according to the real-time wind fluctuation. A flexible control module for this process has been composed in this paper. FINDINGS: The wake effect induces real power fluctuations, which can affect reactive power reserve classified as grid interconnection conditions. For developing a stable reactive power controller, an appropriate reference assignment plan must be configured to reflect the internal network structure. In this paper, we propose a flexible control plan in terms of reactive power when the output fluctuation of wind power generation occurs due to the wake effect. IMPROVEMENTS/APPLICATIONS: The designed fluctuating condition is utilized in a case study to verify control robustness. The simulation was performed with the aim of finding efficient allocation points on the use of the reactive power reserve according to the fluctuations.