Reactive power compensation strategies for wind generation in distribution systems: a power quality approach

This paper studies the impact on the voltage profile of wind energy based generators connected to distribution power systems. Voltage fluctuations arise in distribution levels including noncontrollable primary energy sources because of their corresponding active power injection variations. A number of reactive power strategies have been analysed and compared focusing on the voltage fluctuation minimisation. A distribution network with real wind generation data has been used as a benchmark system to establish the results. Finally, once the reactive power profile is deduced using one of the proposed strategies, a Static Var Compensator is designed in order to show the viability of the adopted reactive power compensation scheme.

Keywords: distributed generation, reactive power compensation, power quality, voltage fluctuations, wind generators, wind power, wind energy, voltage profile, power distribution, static var compensators, reactive compensation