Development of a computer twins-based wind farm testbed

Abstract

As the contribution of wind energy to the power grid increases, serious concern about its influence on the dynamic behavior of the power system has also increased. This has raised the need for advanced analysis and simulation tools that can study the complicated dynamic behavior of wind turbines, test their controllers as well as emulate a complex power grid. Therefore, to meet all the aforementioned goals, a reconfigurable hybrid wind farm testbed has been developed and implemented into a real-time simulation platform that has eight CPUs. The proposed wind farm testbed includes a Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) system involving a Doubly-fed Induction Machine (DFIM) test setup and wind turbine controllers. The wind farm model is also tested under normal and abnormal grid conditions. Several types of system symmetrical and asymmetrical faults are investigated. The first is a two-phase to ground fault at the point of common coupling (PCC) and the second is a three-phase to ground fault. An innovative approach referred to as Computer Twins is employed to react to these faults and maintain the stability of the power grid. A comprehensive set of test results are presented in this paper to demonstrate the capability of proposed testbed.