Modelling and performance analysis of wind farms: A case study of the ashegoda wind farm in Ethiopia

This paper deals with the impact of wind power integration on the transient stability and other operational indices of the power system. The paper starts off by introducing the use of generic wind turbine model for studies involving large scale wind power integration. Using the generic model derived, voltage and power at the point of common coupling as well as the swing curves of conventional synchronous generators following a major grid fault were computed and the critical fault clearing times were determined and compared with one another for different levels of wind integration. It was found out that using the currently established controller structure and parameter settings, the transient stability performance of the system deteriorates with increasing wind integration. However, it was also observed that there are a range of options to improve the performance of the system even to the extent of improving on the performance beyond the baseline scenario where there is no wind power generation at all. A 120-MW wind farm currently under installation in Ethiopia has been used for purposes of illustration. The result also gives insight into distinct features of wind power connected to the rest of the system via weak links.