WINDegration - Control and management of wind farms for the integration in grids with low inertia under consideration of the interactions between the individual power plants

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Constantinos Sourkounis
• Subject Area: Electrical Energy Systems, Power Management, Power Electronics, Electrical Machines and Drives
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 501898183

To combat the climate change and its global consequences, the European Union enforces an increased installation of renewable energy sources power plants in the interconnected system, with a decreased number of conventional power plants connected to the utility grid as a result. This has a significant impact on the frequency stability, as the overall inertial mass of the grid as well as the number of participants in primary control are reduced. The voltage support is also affected, since conventional power plants cannot supply reactive power anymore. In order to ensure a safe and robust operation of the interconnected system in the future as well, suppliers coupled to the grid with power converters have to participate in the provision of ancillary grid services. Especially the potential of wind farms as virtual central power plants needs to be analyzed and utilized. Therefore, this project focuses on the development of an advanced wind farm management and control system, which enable wind farms to participate in frequency and voltage control. Based on a “global operating point optimization”, the main objectives of a maximum energy yield as well as a robust and reliable provision of ancillary grid services are optimally brought together. As further essential aspects, the subcomponents’ stresses are minimized in order to increase the lifetime, efficiency and reliability of the wind turbines. For the investigations, a holistic emulation of a wind farm is developed with special regard to its electrical, mechanical and aerodynamic couplings via 3D wind models. This enables precise simulations of the grid dynamics, the interactions between the power converters and the resonances of the overall system in a highly detailed standard. The investigations are performed based on simulations as well as validated by experimental results using a small-scaled wind farm laboratory infrastructure. A further project goal is the knowledge transfer with science and industry as well as teaching of students with publications, workshops and additional theoretical and practical teaching methods.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants