A new simple and robust control strategy for wind farm reactive power regulation

Since electrical systems endowed with variable generating units are called to dominate the electrical landscape in the near future, it is necessary to develop new tools that will allow working efficiently in this forthcoming environment. Wind power generation is becoming one of the most important renewable energy sources in Spain and, consequently, the simulation of wind farm power performance will probably become an essential tool so as to suggest appropriate locations for new farms. Additionally, their active/reactive power regulation possibility may turn out to be very significant in the decision making process for the generator type to be installed in each wind farm. This paper presents a reactive power regulation algorithm for wind farms made up with doubly fed induction machines (DFIM), together with simulation results corresponding to the developed control algorithm, as well as experimental results obtained when implementing it in a wind farm placed in the north of Spain.