Pramod Jain; Wind Energy Engineering, ISBN:

9780071843843, Mc Graw Hill, NY, USA, 2016

Chapter 9
Deploying Wind Turbines in Grid

Copyright © The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
 Introduction
• In this chapter, the focus is on the interactions
between the grid and a wind farm. The first
section discusses how the variability of wind
energy is handled on the grid and how wind
energy is integrated into the grid. The next
section is an introduction to the various electrical
components that are between the turbine and the
grid, followed by introduction to transmission and
distribution, and conductors that carry current in a
wind farm. The standards for interconnection are
discussed next. This is followed by description of
alternate wind farm topologies.
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• Despite all the advantages of wind energy,
there is a serious disadvantage: Variability
of the wind resource, the raw material.
When wind speeds are low, there is no or
low energy production.
• This chapter will explain the place of wind
energy in a grid and how variability in wind
resource is managed in a grid.

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• Generation capacity on a grid can be classified
into three types: Base-load generators, spinning
reserves, and non-spinning reserves.
• Base-load generators are large thermal or
nuclear power plants that run at fixed capacity 7
days a week, 24 hours a day. These plants run at
capacity factors of 90-plus%, because they are
most efficient at high-capacity factors. These
plants supply energy to cover the “base load.”
Base load is the minimum amount of hourly
energy consumption across the entire grid on any
day.
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• . Spinning reserves is the second type of
generation capacity comprising of natural
gas or diesel-powered generators. These
generators, as the name suggest, are
spinning or running at low capacity all the
time and can react very quickly to increase
in demand. These generators meet the
variable portion of demand during the day

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• Non-spinning reserves are generators that
have a reaction of time of 10 min to 1 h. As
the name suggests, these reserves are not
running and need time to warm up and start
producing energy. The goal of these
reserves is to fill in for known changes to
supply and demand, for example, scheduled
maintenance of a base-load generator. In a
highly reliable grid, the capacity of the three
types of generators is planned to meet the
variability in demand.
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• Wind and solar plants supply energy to offset
the production of spinning reserves. The
amount of wind and solar energy is becoming
larger and is likely to be a significant fraction
of total electricity production in a grid. With
wind penetration of up to 20% of system total
peak demand, additional spinning reserves
will be required. It has been found that this
results in additional cost of up to 10% of the
wholesale value of wind energy which is a
modest increase in cost.

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• Wind resource varies second-to-second, hour-by-
hour, and has diurnal and seasonal patterns. As
wind energy is aggregated from multiple turbines in
a wind farm, the short-term variations in wind
resources is attenuated as a percentage of the
overall power output. When wind energy from
multiple wind farms is aggregated, minuteto-hour
variation in energy is attenuated and an hour-to-
day variation in wind energy production and
delivery to the grid is observed. Grid system
operators manage such variations using spinning
reserves.
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• Consider another case when wind energy
penetration into a grid is high and there is
insufficient load on the grid. This may
occur during high wind periods. Because
wind energy is considered an intermittent
resource, wind plants are asked to curtail
energy production, after all the spinning
reserves have attained the minimum
energy output level

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• Overall, connecting Wind power to an existing grid
does not pose significant operational issues as long
as:
• (i) wind penetration levels into the grid are low,
• (ii) grid has sufficient spinning reserves with high
response rates. As the size of wind plants increases
to 500-MW+ and approaches the size of traditional
fossil-based power plants and wind energy
penetration is higher than 20%, then integration with
grid and management of the variability of wind
resource becomes a bigger challenge

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“Scheduling” and Dispatch of Wind
Resources
• Electricity grid operators use a method of
day-ahead scheduling of generation
resources in order to do short-term
planning of matching supply (generation)
and demand (load). Simplistically, at any
given point of time, there cannot be
imbalances on the grid, that is, supply
must match demand.

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• Because there is no storage on most networks,
excess supply or excess demand lead to imbalances.
On a second-bysecond basis, supply and demand
are kept in balance with load— following spinning
reserves generators. On a day-to-day basis, a grid
operator plans grid operations by seeking day-ahead
generation plans from each generation entity on the
grid. The day-ahead plan, or forecast, is in the form of
an hour-by-hour generation output that will be made
available to the grid. This is called generator’s
schedule

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Transmission and Distribution
• Wind turbines are connected to three
types of electricity networks:
Transmission, distribution, and directly to
the delivery point.
• The distinction between the three is based
on the line voltage. The current-carrying
capacity depends on the size of the
conductor. The power is carried in three
conductors, one for each phase.

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Power Quality: Flicker, and Harmonics
• Flicker, as the name suggests, is a short-
term variation in voltage that causes a light
bulb to noticeable change in intensity. The
source of flicker is (i) change in torque as
blade passes the tower during normal
operations, if a single turbine were
supplying energy and (ii) startup and
disconnect of turbine(s) from the grid.

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• The next power quality issue is harmonics.
Harmonics are introduced when power
converters are used, for example, in
variable-speed turbines. The source of
harmonics is because of the imperfect
sinusoidal wave (sinusoidal is approximated
by a step function) generated by power
converter during the DC–AC stage. Pulse-
width modulation, a method employed by
most modern turbines produces harmonics
with a frequency of about 2000 Hz and small
amplitude.
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• Such high-frequency and low-amplitude
harmonics can be easily removed by high-
frequency filters. Higher frequency
harmonics, if not filtered, can cause
reduction in the impedance of capacitors.
Lower-frequency harmonics seen with
thyristor-based power converters is lower
frequency and higher amplitude, which
causes higher current heating of
capacitors and transformers.

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Wind Farm Topologies
The layout of a wind farm is a function of
wind speeds and wake effects. Once a
layout of turbines has been determined, an
intrawind farm collector system is designed.
Considerations include:
•Topology of the collector system include the
following options: radial, feeder-subfeeder,
and looped feeder. Most wind farms operate
on a feeder-subfeeder topology.

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• Voltage level for the collector system
• Mix of underground and overhead cables
in the wind farm Location of substation
• Design of the neutral and grounding
systems

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Protection Systems

• Switch or circuit breaker that is operated

electromechanically or electronically that
can open or close connections in a circuit
to protect the generator, transformer, grid,
and other systems. The speed of switches
is very important; the time of operation is
of the order of 0.1 s after a fault is
detected.

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• Monitoring system that measures
quantities like current, voltage, frequency,
and others. Quantities are measured in
each of the three phases and may be
measured at the input and output of the
generator, input and output of transformer,
input to the grid, and flow in the grid. The
measured quantities are used in the logic
system.
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• Logic system that compares measured
quantities against preset threshold levels,
compares two measured quantities and
performs other computations following
which the logic system computes the action
required. The signal about the action is
sent to the switch, which executes the
action. In a programmable protection
system, the logic, the threshold levels, and
other parameters are programmed.

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• Newer wind farms also have a fourth component,
which is a sophisticated communication system that
connects the different protection units in a wind farm
using a fast fiber-based Ethernet to each other, a
centralized controller, and SCADA system. Such
protection systems, with the three or four
components, are referred to in the industry by the
generic name of intelligent electronic device (IED).
IED is defined as “device with versatile electrical
protection functions, advanced local control
intelligence, monitoring abilities, and the capability
of extensive communications directly to a SCADA
system.”
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• Several quantities are monitored by
protection systems:
• Over and under voltage
• Over current and direction of current
• Over and under frequency
• Directional and nondirectional earth fault
protection
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Grounding for Overvoltage and Lightning
Protection

• Grounding or earthing design is crucial for safe

operation of a wind project. Most turbine
manufacturers provide a grounding system and
supervise its installation. A common grounding
system consists of a ring installed in or around the
foundation of the turbine with long copper rods
driven into the earth. The ring is bonded to the
reinforced concrete foundation and then connected
to a neighboring turbine using conductors that
emanate out radially from the two sides of the ring

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The same grounding system is used for
grounding the wind turbine and all its
components, and grounding lightning strikes.
Grounding system must provide:
•(a) Low impedance path for current to flow
and
•(b) equipotential bonding, which is to ensure
that all the metal components like tower,
electrical cabinets, and foundation are at the
same potential.
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Lightning Protection
• In order to design a system that is safe
during lightning strikes, pathways must be
designed for the lightning current to be
safely conducted down to the earth without
causing unacceptable damage or
disturbances to the systems. Traditional
tall structures like buildings and
transmission lines use conductors that are
put above and around the structure to
provide lightning attachments points.
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• Wind turbines do not have separate conductors,
other than blades, that provide attachment
points. Since most modern blades are made of
composites, the blades are not good conductors.
• In order to conduct lightning currents, blades
have embedded conductors with attachment
points starting a few centimeters from the tip of
the blade and placed all along the length of the
blade. Steel wires of 12 mm or more are used to
conduct the lightning current safely to ground
and without damage to the blade.
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• Serious damage to blade occurs when arcs
are formed inside the blade as the lightning
current jumps from the conductor to air
chamber or between layers of composite
material. The internal arcs cause pressure
shock waves that can cause severe
damage, including explosion of blade. From
the blade, lightning may pass through pitch
bearings, hub, main shaft, main shaft
bearings, gears, generator bearings,
bedplate, yaw bearing, and tower.
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• The second most common damage
because of lightning is to the control
systems. This is primarily because the
control systems are designed for low
voltages.

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Transformers for Wind Applications
• Step-up transformers in wind applications
are different compared to standard off-the-
shelf transformers used for power
applications. Significant numbers of
failures indicate that attention must be
paid to the uniqueness of the conditions in
which wind application transformers
operate. The following are some of the
differences:

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• Wind turbine step-up transformers (WTST)
are subject to loads that correspond to the
average capacity factor of the wind farm.
That is, the transformer operates at 35 to
45% of its rated capacity, on average.
Traditional transformers are subject to
loads at the rated capacity or slightly
higher.

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• Loading on WTST is considerably more
cyclical than traditional transformers. The
thermal cycling caused by varying load can
cause damage to insulation and to internal
and external connectors.
• Imperfect sinusoidal waveform because of
power electronics converters cause additional
loading. If high-frequency filters are not used,
then electrostatic shielding may be required to
prevent transfer of harmonic frequencies to
the higher voltage side.
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• Ability to withstand low-voltage ride-
through (LVRT) requires that transformer
be able to handle full short-circuit current
for at least 0.625 s. During such a
transient period, the transformer
experiences high mechanical forces.

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Transmission Bottlenecks
• Areas with high wind energy are not areas where
people like to live. So, after wind energy is
harvested, it must be transported/transmitted to
population centers where most energy is used.
Since few people live in high-wind areas, the
electricity grid is weak in those areas and the
predominant flow of electricity has to be reversed
from flowing into the region to flowing out of the
region. For this and other reasons, significant
upgrades to the transmission infrastructure are
required in most countries to increase
penetration of wind energy to significant levels
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• In the United States, several studies have
indicated2,3 that wind energy penetration
levels of 20% into the electricity grid are
feasible without adversely impacting system
reliability. In order to achieve this level of
penetration, transmission upgrades, voltage
control devices and dynamic voltage support
will be required. Since transmission
upgrades are longer lead time projects, the
planning and implementation of the
upgrades must precede wind projects.
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SCADA Systems
• Supervisory control and data acquisition
(SCADA) system is the nerve center for a wind
plant that collects data from the wind farm and
controls the wind farm locally and remotely. In a
typical wind farm, all turbines, switchgears,
meters, met-towers, and all other systems that
collect data and can be remotely controlled are
connected using fiber-optic cables to a central
SCADA computer onsite. The main functions of
a SCADA system are: Data acquisition,
reporting, and control.
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