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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENERGY CONVERSION, VOL. 17, NO.

2, JUNE 2002 279

Automatic Generation Control of a Wind Farm With


Variable Speed Wind Turbines
José Luis Rodríguez-Amenedo, Member, IEEE, Santiago Arnalte, and Juan Carlos Burgos, Member, IEEE

Abstract—Wind farms are considered to be negative loads from


the point of view of a utility manager. Modern variable-speed
wind turbines offer the possibility for controlling active and
reactive power separately. This paper presents a new integrated
control system of a wind farm according to the utility manager
requirements. This control system is based on two control levels:
A supervisory system controls active and reactive power of the
whole wind farm by sending out set points to all wind turbines,
and a machine control system ensures that set points at the
wind turbine level are reached. The system has been validated
by numerical simulation using data from a wind farm with 37
variable-speed wind turbine situated in the North of Spain. An
automatic generation control of these characteristics promises
improved performance of the system and a better grid integration
of the wind energy without significant extra costs.
Index Terms—Reactive power control, variable speed drives,
wind power generation.

I. INTRODUCTION

S PAIN is the third country on the world to utilize wind


power, just after Germany and the United States [1].
Prospects for 2010 point to 8000-MW installed power from
wind energy, which will represent a significant percentage of
the total capacity in the Spanish electrical system. Nevertheless,
in spite of this large installed wind power, reduced effort has
been made to appropriately control these energy production
systems. Fig. 1. Yerga wind farm layout.
Most of actual wind farms in Spain are made up of several
wind turbines installed in one site operating almost indepen- II. WIND FARM DESCRIPTION
dently of each other. Newer wind turbines are variable-speed
units that use power electronic converters, which allow decou- Yerga Wind Farm is located at La Rioja, Spain. It is made up
pled control of torque and power factor of the generator [2]. This of 37 G47/660 variable-speed wind turbines, which use a doubly
technology can be used to support wind farm integration in the fed induction generator, with a total rated power of 24.42 MW.
electrical system. More than 50% of all wind turbines installed Fig. 1 shows the electrical layout of the wind turbines dis-
in Spain use this advanced technology. Most of them include tributed on four underground medium-voltage (MV) circuits at
doubly fed induction generators. 20 kV. MV circuits meet at Yerga substation (ST). Voltage is
The aim of this paper is to present a new integrated control boosted up to 66 kV (HV) by means a step-up transformer 35
system of the total active and reactive power generated by the MVA, 66/20 kV. ST connects the wind farm with the point of
wind farm. The control system reduces the number of wind tur- common coupling (PCC), which is located at Quel substation
bine shutdowns produced by over/under voltage variations be- through a 16.38-Km long feeder.
yond limits and thus increases the number of operation hours. Main parameters of the wind farm are given in the Appendix.
Besides that, reactive power control makes it possible to hold
unit power factor at the point where the reactive meter is located
or even to produce reactive power, which allows the wind farm III. GENERATOR CONTROL
owner not to be penalized for reactive power consumption. Fig. 2 shows the main components of the variable-speed
pitch-controlled G47/660 wind turbine used at Yerga wind
Manuscript received March 16, 2001; revised December 5, 2001. farm. The electrical system consists of a doubly fed induction
The authors are with the Electrical Engineering Department, Carlos III Uni-
versity, Leganés, Madrid, Spain. generator (DFIG), whose stator winding is directly connected
Publisher Item Identifier S 0885-8969(02)05417-7. to the secondary of a three winding transformer. Rotor winding
0885-8969/02$17.00 © 2002 IEEE
280 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENERGY CONVERSION, VOL. 17, NO. 2, JUNE 2002

assured by a speed controller (SC) acting on the gen-


erator torque.
— Power limitation above rated wind speed: The power
controller has to assure rated output of the wind turbine
by acting on the pitch angle. The speed controller keeps
rotational speed constant at its rated value.
When considering a better integration into the grid, the wind
turbine can no longer be considered a negative load, but some
kind of power control has to be achieved [5]. Under this new
assumption, another control objective is considered.
— Power limitation below rated wind speed: The power
controller assures reference power is achieved by
acting on the pitch angle.
The block diagram of the proposed control system is shown
in Fig. 3. The control system consists of two control loops:
— a speed control loop, which controls generator speed
by acting on the generator torque;
— a power control loop, which controls wind turbine
output by acting on the pitch angle.
When no power reference is given from the supervisory
Fig. 2. G47/660 wind turbine.
control system, power reference is set up at its rated value.
Bellow rated wind speed, a negative power error is achieved,
is connected at the tertiary of the transformer through a bidirec- and the controller output (reference pitch angle ) decreases
tional frequency converter made up of two back-to-back IGBT until the controller reaches its lower saturation (optimal pitch).
bridges (which are referred to as the supply-side and rotor-side Therefore, the turbine works at the optimal pitch. On the other
converters). hand, the optimal speed is obtained as a reference for the speed
The rotor-side converter (RSC) controls rotor current in the controller from the characteristic that represents the wind
stator flux frame reference [3]. Direct and quadrature current turbine output as a function of the optimal speed: the so-called
components allow decoupled control of torque and reactive maximum power tracking strategy (MPT). This characteristic
power. Direct rotor current can be used in the same way as field is truncated at rated speed; therefore, no speed reference over
current in a synchronous generator. Quadrature rotor current rated speed is provided. Above rated wind speed, a positive
is used to control the generator torque to achieve the desired power error is achieved, and the pitch angle is driven to positive
rotational speed in the variable-speed system. The supply side values until rated power is achieved. On the other hand, for
converter (SSC) is current controlled to deliver rotor power to this level of power, rated rotational speed reference is obtained,
the grid at supersynchronous speed (or to draw rotor power and the speed controller assures this reference over this range
from the grid at subsynchronous speed). Vector control of SSC of operation. Note that in steady state, as the power controller
also allows reactive power compensation. Harmonic distortion assures rated output, and the speed controller assures rated
of grid-injected currents is maintained into admissible limits by speed; the generator torque is also rated.
means of a suitable PWM technique and the three-phase choke When a power reference is given from the supervisory control
linking SSC and tertiary transformer winding. system, there could be two situations. First, wind velocity is high
enough. Then, the power controller will drive the blade pitch
IV. WIND TURBINE CONTROL SYSTEM angle to the adequate value, but on the other hand, a rotational
speed reference is given to the speed controller that it is not
The control system consists of two separated control loops: optimal (in fact, smaller than optimal). Therefore, tip speed ratio
one for machine active power control (MAPC) and the other for is smaller than optimal and power coefficient results that are
reactive power control (MRPC). also decreased by this variable, i.e., the speed control loop helps
The control objectives of the active power control system the pitch drive to reduce power resulting in a less demanding
without grid operator command reference are based on the fol- action on this system. If wind is not high enough, the power
lowing strategies for a variable-speed wind turbine with variable controller will reach saturation at optimal pitch angle, and an
pitch. optimal rotational speed reference will be provided to the speed
— Power optimization below rated wind speed: The en- controller, obtaining maximum power for such wind speed.
ergy capture is maximized by making the turbine work The reactive power control system is based on a reactive
at maximum power coefficient [4]. The pitch angle power controller and a subordinated voltage control loop. The
is kept constant at its optimal value, whereas the tip subordinated control loop assures that the voltage limits are not
speed ratio is driven to its optimal value by varying violated when trying to reach the reactive power reference. The
the rotational speed . Reference rotational speed is principle of the reactive power control is as follows. First, a
RODRÍGUEZ-AMENEDO et al.: AUTOMATIC GENERATION CONTROL OF A WIND FARM 281

Fig. 3. Control system block diagram.

reactive power reference is set up by a supervisory control


system. The reactive power controller computes the reactive
power error and sets up a voltage level reference . In the
following, the machine voltage controller (MVC) will compute
the voltage error and set up an excitation current reference
for the machine excitation current controller.
The reactive power reference cannot be reached when the
controller reaches saturation at the maximum or minimum
voltage limit. In such a case, the control system will control
the voltage level so that the limit is not violated, assuring the
availability of each individual machine, i.e., the control system Fig. 4. Electrical generator model.
prevents the voltage protection to shoot and disconnect the
machine. limits are not violated when trying to reach the reactive power
reference. The principle of the reactive power control is as
V. SUPERVISORY CONTROL SYSTEM follows. First, a reactive power reference is set up, and usually,
unity power factor is desired. The reactive power controller
The purpose of supervisory control system is to control the
computes the reactive power error and sets up a voltage level
active and reactive power injected by the whole wind farm into
reference at the wind farm substation. In the following,
the grid ( and ). The system consists of two control
the wind farm voltage controller (WFVC) will compute the
loops for active and reactive power control respectively.
voltage error and set up a reactive power reference for
The active control loop is based on a wind farm active power
each machine-reactive power controller.
controller WFAPC. Under grid operation, the controller will re-
The reactive power reference cannot be reached when the
ceive a power reference from the grid operator. The con-
controller reaches saturation at the maximum or minimum
troller then computes the active power error and sets up a power
voltage limit. In such a case, the control system will control
reference for each machine active power controller.
the voltage level so that the limit is not violated, assuring the
Note that if power reference is increased when one or more
availability of the wind farm, i.e., the control system prevents
machines are working at maximum power, the rest of the ma-
the voltage protection to shoot and disconnect the wind farm.
chines will automatically assume the load, as the active power
controller will increase computed reference power due to the
power error. VI. SIMULATION PROCESS
The reactive control loop is based on a wind farm reactive In order to validate the proposed control systems, a simula-
power controller (WFRPC) and a subordinated voltage control tion process has been carried out. Each simulation starts at a
loop. The subordinated control loop assures that the voltage steady-state where a wind velocity, voltage level at the PCC,
282 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENERGY CONVERSION, VOL. 17, NO. 2, JUNE 2002

Fig. 7. Case 1: Active and reactive power delivered.

the generator torque control loop is much faster than any


of the considered dynamic models.
4) If each generator torque and speed is known, the static
model of the Fig. 4 is used to compute the current injected
by each generator . The model uses as inputs the stator
voltage , the current injected by the grid-side power
converter , and the rotor current . First, rotor cur-
rent is obtained from the current control loops. Note that
Fig. 5. Wind farm electrical network. these control loops provide rotor current components in
a reference frame aligned along the stator flux ( – com-
ponents) so that rotor current vector has to be projected
on a reference frame aligned along the stator voltage.
Next, stator current and rotor voltage are calculated.
Then, rotor active power can be obtained, and taking into
account that the grid-side power converter objective is to
transfer the rotor power to the grid, the current injected
by the power converter can be obtained. Note that under
vector control, this power converter can transfer active
power to the grid with a desired power factor. Here, unity
power factor is taken. Finally, the total current injected
into the grid is obtained.
5) If the voltage at the PCC and each generator current is
known (see Fig. 5), the voltages at each machine terminals
Fig. 6. Wind speed at wind turbines number 3, 9, 19, and 33.
and the current injected at the PCC are calculated con-
sidering the wind farm network admittance matrix. From
and desired wind farm active and reactive power are given. From here, each machine and the wind farm active and reactive
these inputs, each machine voltage, active power, and reactive power can be obtained, providing the feedback to the dy-
power is obtained. The dynamic simulation starts when one or namic models of the control systems.
more inputs change. The simulation process is as follows. The process is repeated each time step. The simulation uses a
1) The dynamic model of the supervisory control system variable step size with a maximum of 0.1 s. A new wind speed
will produce a change in the active and reactive power is read from the input file when the simulation time step cor-
references of each machine control system. responds to the step of the wind data. Different wind data are
2) For each machine, the dynamic model of the machine used for each WASP-programmed machine that uses a single
control system will produce a change in the current ref- anemometer measure processed to consider the wake effect and
erences of the electrical generator current control loops turbulence intensity in each machine, taking into account topog-
and/or a change in the blade pitch control system. raphy data of the wind farm and layout of machines.
3) The dynamic model of the drive train will provide each
machine rotational speed. For this purpose, turbine and
VII. SIMULATION RESULTS
generator torque first have to be evaluated. A simple static
nonlinear turbine model is considered. The model com- Three different cases have been run. Fig. 6 shows the wind
putes turbine torque considering wind velocity, rotational velocity used in the all the cases (only wind in four turbines is
speed, and blade pitch as inputs. The generator torque ref- shown). In the first case, the reactive power reference is set at
erence provided by the speed control loop is taken as the zero, whereas the active power shows that the system achieves
actual generator torque, i.e., no dynamic is considered as the three control objectives for machine active power control.
RODRÍGUEZ-AMENEDO et al.: AUTOMATIC GENERATION CONTROL OF A WIND FARM 283

Fig. 8. Case 1: Rotational speed at wind turbines number 3, 9, 19, and 33.
Fig. 10. Case 1: Maximum and minimum voltage at buses 1 to 37.

Fig. 9. Case 1: Pitch angle at wind turbines number 3, 9, 19, and 33.
Fig. 11. Case 2: Active and reactive power delivered.
In Figs. 7–9 from 0 to 400 s, no external active power reference
has been specified. Then, below-rated wind speed 14 m/s en-
ergy capture is maximized through speed variation. Above-rated
wind velocity, rotational speed, and power are limited to rated
values through pitch variation. From 400 s, 12.5-MW wind farm
power reference has been specified, and Fig. 7 shows that spec-
ified reference is achieved. Finally, Fig. 10 shows the voltage
profile at each turbine during simulation by indicating max-
imum and minimum rms voltage values.
The second case is the same as before, except that a reac-
tive power step is applied at 200 s. Fig. 11 shows that the com-
manded reactive power is achieved by even share among ma-
chines. As a result, Fig. 12 shows the voltages at the wind farm
substation and in four of the machines.
The last case is the same as the first one, but a high PCC Fig. 12. Case 2: Voltages at HV bus and at buses number 3, 9, 19, and 33.
voltage (1.12 p.u.) is considered. Therefore, each machine sup-
plies a different reactive power (see Fig. 13), and wind farm re-
based on a hierarchical architecture with a supervisory control
active power reference cannot be achieved. As a con-
system controlling the active and reactive power at the wind
sequence, the upper limit in the machine voltages (1.09 p.u.) is
farm substation and a machine control system controlling the
reached; see Fig. 14. Nevertheless, voltages (in the wind farm
active and reactive power at each particular wind turbine. The
substation and in each machine) can be controlled, and none of
active power control loop allows either following a power
the machines is disconnected.
reference or maximizing energy capture when no reference
is supplied. The reactive power control loop makes possible
VIII. CONCLUSIONS voltage control and then achieves a high availability of wind
turbines.
An automatic generation control system for wind farms Simulation results show good performance of the control
has been designed and tested by simulation. Real data from system during a highly variable wind, large electrical distur-
a Spanish wind farm has been used. The proposed system is bance and commanded active and reactive power steps.
284 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENERGY CONVERSION, VOL. 17, NO. 2, JUNE 2002

Wind Turbine
Rotor diameter m
Mechanical time constant s
Pitch system time constant s
Speed range r/min.

Electrical system (Fig. 4)


Stator rated power 660 kVA
m , m ,
m , m ,
Power factor range 0.,94 lead and lag at full load
Feeder

Fig. 13. Case 3: Active and reactive power delivered. Length Km


Impedance Km
Shunt admittance S/Km
Short circuit power at PCC MVA.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank E. de la Rioja S.A. (Yerga’s
wind farm owner) and I. Ingeniería Consultoría S.A. for data
provided.

REFERENCES
[1] Papoutsis et al., “Wind energy. The facts,” Eur. Wind Energy Assoc.,
ISBN92-828-4571-0.
[2] Z. Chen and E. Spooner, “Grid interface options for variable-speed, per-
manent magnet generators,” Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng. Elect. Power Appl.,
vol. 145, no. 4, July 1998.
[3] R. Pena, J. C. Clare, and G. M. Asher, “Doubly fed induction generator
using back to back PWM converters and its application to variable-speed
wind energy generation,” Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng. Elect. Power Appl., vol.
143, no. 3, May 1996.
Fig. 14. Case 3: Voltages at HV bus and at buses number 3, 9, 19, and 33. [4] S. Heier, Grid Integration of Wind Energy Conversion Sys-
tems. Chichester, U.K.: Wiley, 1998.
[5] E. N. Hinrichsen, “Controls for variable pitch wind turbine generators,”
APPENDIX IEEE Trans. Power App. Syst., vol. PAS-103, Apr. 1984.

LV/MV transformers: 775 kVA, 20 kV/690-300 V,


%
MV/HV transformer: 35 MVA, 66 kV/20 kV, % José Luis Rodríguez-Amenedo (M’01) received the B.S. degree in energy en-
Underground cable gineering from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, madrid, Spain, in 1993
and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Universidad Carlos III de
Madrid in 2000.
Type His current interests are control drives and wind energy systems. He is now
Section mm Assistant Professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
Km
Km
F/Km Santiago Arnalte received the B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering
from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain, in 1989 and 1993, re-
At circuit 1 and 2 underground cables are type 1. spectively.
Circuit 3: from ST to WT14 cables are type 3 His current interests are control drives and wind energy systems. He is now
an Associate Professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
from WT14 to WT17 cables are type 2
from WT17 to WT26 cables are type 1
Circuit 4: from ST to WT27 cables are type 3
from WT27 to WT29 cables are type 2 Juan Carlos Burgos (M’01) received the B. S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical
from WT29 to WT37 cables are type 1 engineering from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain, in 1981
and 1987, respectively.
Mean distance between wind turbines in the wind farm is His current interests are control drives and wind energy systems. He is now
102 m. an Associate Professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.

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