Studies for wind energy facility grid code compliance in South Africa

There have been significant increases in wind energy generation in recent years with an 11-fold increase in installed capacity in the past decade. This increase has resulted in many regulatory bodies defining grid codes specifically for wind energy. This paper provides a guide to engineers wishing to perform grid code compliance studies in the South African context. Typical data that would be required, methodologies to perform the integration studies, assumptions made as well as selected results and analysis from various technical investigations of a proposed Wind Energy Facility (WEF) in South Africa are presented. The technical investigations use an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) specific Wind Turbine Generator (WTG) model. The selected technical investigations presented include Low-Voltage Ridethrough (LVRT) as well as WEF switching analysis. Other aspects of the integration of WEFs including ramp-rates, Sub-Synchronous Resonance (SSR), start-up and stability are also briefly discussed.