Optimisation of wind farm reactive power for congestion management

Variable speed wind turbines are fast becoming the most adopted form of turbine in the harvesting of wind energy. Global awareness of a carbon free mode of electricity generation is driving the interest in the installation of this technology. With increasing wind farm connections on power systems, effective congestion management is vital for maintaining a secure and stable system. Power electronics enable the control of reactive power from modern wind turbines. In this paper the control of this resource has been incorporated into an AC Optimal Power Flow (OPF) tool. This work investigates the ability of wind farms in altering system flows with the aim of easing congestion. This paper shows that minimising the power flow through a selection of congested lines is possible with the coordinated response of reactive power dispatch from wind farms.