Different Factors Affecting Short Circuit Behavior of a Wind Power Plant

A wind power plant (WPP) consists of a large number of turbines interconnected by underground cable. A pad-mounted transformer at each turbine steps up the voltage from a generating voltage (690 V) to a medium voltage (34.5 kV). All turbines in the plant are connected to the substation transformer, where the voltage is stepped up to the transmission level. An important aspect of WPP impact studies is to evaluate the short-circuit (SC) current contribution of the plant into the transmission network under different fault conditions. This task can be challenging to protection engineers due to the topology differences between different types of wind turbine generators and the conventional generating units. This paper investigates the SC behavior of a WPP for different types of faults. The impact of wind turbine types, the transformer configuration, and the reactive compensation capacitor will be investigated. The voltage response at different buses will be observed. Finally, the SC line currents will be presented along with its symmetrical components.