RELIABILITY EVALUATION OF NEW OFFSHORE WIND FARM ELECTRICAL GRID CONNECTION TOPOLOGIES

In this paper, a composite generation transmission approach has been chosen for adequacy evaluation of wind farms integrated with conventional generating units. It has been assumed that the failure characteristics of a turbine's underlying subassemblies possess the required Markov properties to be modeled as Markov processes. The wind farm along with the offshore connection grid has then been modeled in a sequential Monte Carlo simulation which also contains sequential chronological models for wind speed and load level variations over a specific period of time. The reliability of the wind farm is then evaluated against a series of load- and energy-based indices as well as overall productivity of the farm with different connections. The results indicate a potential improvement in the reliability of wind power output when in cluster-type topologies, where the converters are grouped and maintained in a central offshore platform, in comparison to conventional string-type topologies. Academic researchers involved in reliability modeling and risk analysis of renewable sources of energy, particularly wind, as well as industry professionals both in wind turbine manufacturing and operation and maintenance of offshore wind farms would equally benefit from the degree of detail and accuracy provided by the models presented in this paper.