Contribution of variable-speed wind farms to damping of power system oscillations

Pablo Ledesma
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid 28911 Legan s, Madrid, Spain e Email: pablole@ing.uc3m.es

Carlos Gallardo
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid 28911 Legan s, Madrid, Spain e Email: cgallard@ing.uc3m.es

AbstractThis paper shows a variable speed windmill control system intended to damp inter-area power system oscillations. The proposed control is evaluated performing several simulations on a modied version of the 39 buses New England power system, which includes several wind farms. The simulations represent a three-phase shortcircuit, and the damping control system is applied with different gains. Inter-area oscillations and wind energy production graphics are shown and discussed. A modal analysis is performed on the inter-area active power ow in order to evaluate numerically the effect of the control system.

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Proposed control system.

I. I NTRODUCTION Wind power production has been increasing during the last two decades in several European countries, mainly in Denmark, Germany and Spain, while there are plans to install a signicant amount of wind power in several other countries, such as Great Britain. As a result of the demands on reducing polluting emissions, wind energy targets for the incoming years are ambitious, and include large scale offshore wind farms. The increase of wind energy production leads to the substitution of a signicant amount of conventional generation, particularly when load is low and wind speed is high. In this cases, the power system dynamic behavior after a severe perturbation may be different from the expected, and Transmission System Operators may face situations which are different from the usual ones during the previous decades. On one hand, this has risen concern about the effect of the wind farms on several aspects of system operation, and particularly on the electromechanical oscillations after a fault. On the other hand, the evolution of wind turbine technology during the last years offers new possibilities, which may be used to maintain, or even improve, power system stability [1]. Some of the efforts made to use wind turbine technology to improve power system performance, are oriented to contribute to voltage stability [2]. Others are oriented to make the dynamic characteristics of the wind farm similar to that of a conventional power plant [3], [4]. This paper proposes a wind turbine active power control system, which is not intended to reproduce the behaviour of conventional generation plants. The purpose of this control is the damping of the power system electromechanical oscillations, and specially the inter-area oscillations. This objective is interesting for power systems such as the transmission grid in the Spanish Peninsula,

which has a large amount of wind power generation, and a relatively weak connection with the rest of the UCTE power system across the Pyrenees. This paper contains three main parts: the rst one describes the wind turbine control, the second one shows and discusses several simulations performed on the 39-buses test power system, and the third one performs a modal analysis on the inter-area oscillations obtained in the simulations. II. D ESCRIPTION
OF THE CONTROL SYSTEM

The proposed control is based on the ability of variable speed wind turbines to perform an active power control which is decoupled from reactive power control and from rotor mechanical speed. Usually, active power reference is provided by a wind turbine speed control loop, and it is used to track the operation point at which maximum power is absorbed from the wind or to limit the blades speed during high winds. In order to damp power system oscillations, a control signal proportional to the deviation of the frequency is added to the active power reference. This is depicted in Fig. 1, where f is the deviation of the frequency in per unit, Pdamp is the proposed control signal, Pw is the active power reference as provided by the turbine usual control, and Pref is the new active power reference. This control is intended to be performed in windmills with voltage-dip ride-through capability, and will actuate only during transient oscillations. During normal operation, when frequency deviation is null, the control signal Pdamp will be zero. Reactive power reference Qref is supposed to be zero, this is, wind turbine is operating at unity power factor. Although different control strategies may be used here, there is no reason to suppose that they would have major effects on the results of the study.

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Fig. 3. Fig. 2. Modied 39 buses New England power system.
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Inter-area power ow, no damping from wind farms.

It should also be noted that this control technique uses only local variables, so that it does not involve any telecommunication issue. III. S IMULATIONS
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Some simulations have been performed, using the PSS/E software tool, in order to evaluate the performance of the proposed control. Variable speed wind farms are modelled as devices which inject into the power system the active and reactive power provided as a reference by the control system, independently of the voltage at the connection point. The total amount of output current is limited to 110% of the nominal current, in order to protect the semiconductors in the windmill. So, if voltage decreases signicantly (during a fault) wind power production may also decrease. Electromagnetic transients in the generators has been neglected, as it is a usual practice in transient stability simulations. Active and reactive power control loops have also been neglected, because their time scale is very small compared to that of electromechanical oscillations. A user model has been developed in PSS/E to accomplish with this characteristics. A. Base case The proposed control system has been applied to the 39 buses New England test power system, which has been modied to include wind power installations. A total of three wind farms have been simulated, connected at three points of the transmission grid as shown in g. 2. Each of these wind farms may represent an aggregation of several wind farms connected to the same point. Each of the wind farms produce 250 MW. As total production is 6225 MW, this results in a 12% of wind power penetration. The production of generator 10, which represents another area, has been reduced in order to accommodate wind power.

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Wind farms output power, no damping from wind farms.

B. Simulation results with no damping control A three-phase shortcircuit at the bus shown in g. 2 has been simulated, with a duration of 200 ms. The topology of the grid before and after the fault are the same. Fig. 3 shows the active power ow between the New England power system and the area represented by generator 10. It can be seen a 0.5 Hz, poorly damped inter-area oscillation. Fig. 4 shows the active power production of the three wind farms. This production remains basically constant, because the active power reference at the windfarms is independent from the grid conditions. Only during, and immediately after the fault, active power output decreases as a result of voltage decay, because of current limitation in the electronic converters. C. Simulation results with damping control Figs. 5 to 7 show the active power ow between both areas using different control gains. The control loop gain, which is depicted as K in g. 1, is 16, 64 and 256 respectively. It can

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Inter-area power ow, wind farm damping control with gain=16.

Fig. 8. Wind farms output power, wind farm damping control with gain=16.
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Inter-area power ow, wind farm damping control with gain=64.

Fig. 9. Wind farms output power, wind farm damping control with gain=64.
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Inter-area power ow, wind farm damping control with gain=256.

Fig. 10. gain=256.

Wind farms output power, wind farm damping control with

TABLE I M ODAL ANALYSIS Gain (p.u.) 0 8 16 32 64 128 256 Interval (s) 2-12 2-12 2-12 2-12 2-12 2-12 2-12 Error (%) 0.14 0.34 0.27 0.27 0.57 0.61 0.98 Frequency (Hz) 0.507 0.509 0.510 0.510 0.509 0.499 0.501 Damping 0.085 0.090 0.093 0.101 0.122 0.159 0.375

0.4 0.35 0.3 Damping factor 0.25 0.2 0.15 0.1 0.05 0 50 100 150 200 Damping control gain K (p.u.) 250 300

be seen how inter-area power oscillations are damped by the proposed control. Figs. 8 to 10 show the active power production of the three wind farms under the same circumstances. It can be seen at g. 8, which corresponds to a gain K=16, how wind power production is modied after the fault in order to damp power system oscillations. The variation in the power production is not very large compared to the total production, and could be performed by modern wind turbines. Fig. 9, which corresponds to a gain K=64, shows larger oscillations in wind power production, which represent an additional effort to the wind turbine control. However, it can be seen that, immediately after the fault, the wind power production always decrease, which will result in a slight increase in rotor speed and, consecuently, in the kinetic energy stored in the rotor and the blades. Thus, the windmill will be able to use this kinetic energy to perform the required active power control. Finally, g. 10 shows wind power oscillations with a gain K=256. The damping of electromechanical oscillations is very energic, as shown in g. 7, but at the price of larger active power excursions at the wind farms. In this case, wind power decays to zero during, approximately, 700 ms. IV. M ODAL
ANALYSIS

Fig. 11.

Effect of the control gain on the damping factor.

which cannot be lower than zero and cannot be higher than the maximum provided by the current limiter, results in strong non-linearities. V. C ONCLUSION It has been shown how wind farms can damp inter-area power system oscillations by means of a simple control loop. This control loop has several advantages: It is simple. Simpler, for example, than power system stabilizers (PSS). It can be implemented by modern windmills without additional costs. It uses only local variables (frequency at the connection point). Among the negative aspects, it should be noted that this control represents a different behaviour to that of conventional generation plants, so that somehow it forces a certain change in the view of power system operation. Also, several issues should be studied in more detail, among then: A small-signal linear analysis, in order to know the effect of the control on the critical eigenvalues. The performance in larger systems with much higher inertia and smaller frequency deviations. The effect on primary frequency control. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank Francisco Rodrguez Bobada for his guidance through the modal analysis procedure. They thank also Red El ctrica de Espa a for the nancial e n support for this work. R EFERENCES
[1] Z. Chen, Issues of Connecting Wind Farms into Power Systems, 2005 IEEE/PES Transmission and Distribution Conference & Exhibition: Asia and Pacic, Dalian, China. [2] R. D. Fernndez, R. J. Mantz, P. E. Battaiotto, Contribution of wind farms to the network stability, IEEE PES 2006 General Meeting, Montreal. [3] O. Anaya-Lara, F.M. Hughes, N. Jenkins and G. Strbac, Contribution of DFIG-based wind farms to power system short-term frequency regulation, IEE Proc.-Gener. Transm. Distrib., Vol. 153, No. 2, March 2006.

A modal analysis has been performed on the inter-area active power oscillation, in order to obtain a better evaluation of the performance of the damping control. Table I shows the results obtained evaluating the eigenvalues using the least square approximation method provided by the PSS/E software tool. The rst column shows the gain K, as depicted in g. 1. The second column shows the time interval used to perform the modal analysis. Column number three sohws the percentage error, and is an indicator of the accuracy of the analysis. Column number four shows the frequency of the main component, which is the only one examinated here, and is always around 0.5 Hz. The last column shows the damping factor, calculated as = / 2 + 2 , were and are the real and imaginary part of the corresponding eigenvalue. It can be seen, examinating the last column, how the damping of the inter-area oscillations is increased by the actuation of the wind farm control. Fig. 11 shows the resuls in a graphic format. Damping factor increase is approximately linear when control gain increases from 0 to 128 p.u.. At higher values of gain K, this relation is not linear any more. The reason is that the limitation in windmills output power,

[4] O. Anaya-Lara, F.M. Hughes, N. Jenkins and G. Strbac, Provision of a synchronising power characteristic on DFIG-based wind farms, IET Gener. Transm. Distrib., Vol. 1, No. 1, January 2007.