Benchmark of Annual Energy Production for Different Wind Farm Topologies

Wind power generation has become an established alternative power source. Especially large wind farms in remote or offshore locations are emerging strongly. Their grid connection demands new transmission solutions as distances increase. A newly proposed voltage source converter (VSC) based HVDC transmission system looks promising compared to conventional AC and DC transmission systems. This paper presents a benchmark of the estimated annual energy production (AEP) of a 200 MW wind farm depending on the transmission distance and the average wind speed. The proposed system is compared to two state-of-the-art wind farm topologies: Variable-speed wind turbines with doubly-fed induction generators (DFIG) and either AC or DC transmission systems. The benchmark comprises detailed drive-train, converter, transformer, distribution and transmission loss models. The total system losses as well as the loss distribution between the different components as a function of the transmission distance and the average wind speed allows important conclusions for future wind farm projects