Control System for Reactive Power of an Offshore Wind Farm

Until just a few years ago wind farms where excluded from many of the requirementsthat can be found in grid codes. But as the numbers of wind farms have grown as wellas the sizes of them, the requirements to connect them to the grid have becomemore stringent. In this thesis it has been investigated if it’s possible to design a controlsystem that controls the reactive power from an offshore wind farm, so that the gridcode requirements regarding reactive power are fulfilled. By controlling the reactivepower the dynamic variations in the voltage are decreased. The regulator should alsobe able to help the wind farm to handle the fault conditions that are described in thegrid code.An offshore wind farm outside the coast of Western Europe is now being planned.Data from this wind farm has been used in this thesis. The wind farm has a total of 54wind turbines with more than 300 MW all together. The reactive power is controlledvia the generators and also by disconnecting and connecting four shunt reactors.A model of the wind farm has been built in Simpow, as well as design of the regulator.Simpow is a simulation program developed by ABB that enables simulations of powersystems. Different scenarios have been simulated to see if it is possible to control thewind farm in the desired way. The results show that the wind farm manages to handlefault conditions as described in the grid, and it is also possible to control the reactivepower in a desirable way