Reactive Power Compensation for Integration of Wind Power in a Distribution Network

As a promising renewable alternative, the wind power is highly expected to contribute a significant part of generation in power systems in the future, but this also bring new integration related power quality issues, which mainly consist of voltage regulation and reactive power compensation. Wind power, as a rule, does not contribute to voltage regulation in the system. Induction machines are mostly used as generators in wind power based generations. Induction generators draw reactive power from the system to which they are connected. Therefore, the integration of wind power to power system networks; especially a weak distribution networks is one of the main concerns of the power system engineers. Voltage control and reactive power compensation in a weak distribution networks for integration of wind power represent main concern of this paper. The problem is viewed from MATLAB/Simulink simulation of weak distribution network and wind power integration in this network. Without reactive power compensation, the integration of wind power in a network causes voltage collapse in the system and under-voltage tripping of wind power generators. For dynamic reactive power compensation, when, STATCOM (Static Synchronous Compensator) is a used at a point of interconnection of wind farm and the network; the system absorbs the generated wind reactive power while maintaining its voltage level.