Load Flow Study for Utility-Scale Wind Farm Economic Operation and Reactive Power Grid Compliance

With environmental and policy pressure to move towards cleaner fuel sources, wind energy is a proven technology that can be successfully implemented at the utility-scale and provide clean energy to the grid. Wind energy consists of many distributed wind turbines that are paralleled and connected to inject power to one location on the transmission grid. There are real power losses and reactive power drops that must be taken into consideration for these projects for plant performance and compliance. The better the performance of each new and operating wind farm installed, the more efficiently the grid operates as well as the less greenhouse gases generated. This thesis will first review the creation of an Excel tool to perform a load flow study given inputs for a wind farm using Newton-Raphson algorithms. Next, the results of the load flow analysis will be compared to an actual operating wind farm located in Texas to review the accuracy of the scenarios. Finally, alternative design and operating states for the wind farm are proposed and cases are simulated to review the impact on wind farm energy generation and reactive power provided to the grid. Finally, preferred improvements for future design and operational considerations are provided along with future areas of research and development.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Electrical Engineering

Department dc:contributor.department

Electrical Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Moon, Christopher Michael

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Rahman, Saifur

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Centeno, Virgilio A.
• De La Reelopez, Jaime

• Renewable energy
• power systems
• wind farm
• newton-raphson
• load flow
• reactive power flow
• active power loss

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:41136

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/119497