Stability and Reactive Power Compensation Techniques in Wind Farm

Wind energy’s presence in the electric power system has dramatically grown over the past decade and will continue to grow worldwide as many countries have planned future developments. Large number of wind turbines are being installed and connected to power systems. In some of the countries the penetration of wind power is significant high so as to affect the power quality, system operation and control and power system stability. In this paper an attempt is made to predict the reactive power burden of the wind farm based on conventional fixed speed induction generator during wind variation and fault condition. PSCAD/EMTDC based large scale wind farm model is developed where STATCOM is introduced as an active voltage and reactive power supporter to increase the power system stability. STATCOM unit injects reactive power to mitigate power quality problems and to get stable grid operation.