Reactive Power Flow Controller

Abstract: Wind energy’s presence in the electric power system has dramatically grown over the past decade and will continue to grow worldwide as many countries have planned future developments. As wind power penetration into the grid increases, the influence of wind farms on the power system operation is becoming more and more important [1]. Wind power is gaining momentum in the world’s energy balance. Several issues have to be addressed whenever power- generating devices are interfaced to the grid. Two of the main requirements are reactive power control in normal operation conditions and fault ride-through capability during fault conditions. The main purpose of normal operation requirements is to maintain the voltage between admissible limits both for security and power quality purposes. Since reactive power cannot be transmitted over long distances, it has to be provided locally. Therefore, in grid connection specifications, wind farms are generally required to contribute to reactive power control. Concerning fault condition requirements, they are aimed at avoiding as much as possible the loss of generation capacity in case of a fault in the transmission grid. Power system operators ensure the quality and reliability of supply to the customers by maintaining the load bus voltage in their permissible limits. Any changes to the system configuration or in power demands can result in higher or lower voltages in the system. This situation can be improved by reallocating reactive power generations in the system [5]. This paper presents the setting of FACTS devices like STATCOM as additional control parameters in the optimization of reactive power dispatch and studies the impact on system loss minimization. This proposed work is carried out in offline full-scale simulations in PSCAD simulation software. This paper concludes that STATCOM at the grid connection point can mitigate reactive power, improve voltage profile.

Keywords: STATCOM, Reactive Power Dispatch, PSCAD.