Model Validation at the 204 MW New Mexico Wind Energy Center
Wind energy continues to be one of the fastest growing technology sectors. This trend is expected to continue globally as we attempt to fulfill a growing electrical energy demand in an environmentally responsible manner. As the number of wind power plants continues to grow and the level of penetration reaches high levels in some areas, there is an increased interest on the part of power system planners in methodologies and techniques that can be used to adequately represent wind power plants in the interconnected power systems. Wind power plants can be very large in terms of installed capacity. The number of turbines within a single wind power plant can be as high 200 turbines or more, and the collector system within the wind power plant can have several hundred miles of overhead and underground lines. It is not practical to model in detail all individual turbines and the collector system for simulations typically conducted by power system planners. To simplify, it is a common practice to represent the entire wind power plant with a small group of equivalent turbine generators or a single turbine generator. The question is how much can a model be simplified and still preserve its faithfulness? In this presentation, we will describe methods to derive and validate equivalent models for a large wind farm. FPL Energy's 204-MW New Mexico Wind Energy Center, which is interconnected to the Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM) transmission system, was used as a case study. The methods described are applicable to any large wind power plant. We will illustrate how to derive a simplified single-machine equivalent model of a large wind power plant (which includes an equivalent collector system model), preserving the net steady state and dynamic behavior of the actual installation. We use steady state as well as the dynamic analysis to derive the equivalent model. To verify the derivations, we compare the steady state and dynamic performance of the equivalent model against a detailed model of the wind power plant, which contains all the wind turbine generators and associated collector system.
- Research Organization:
- National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC36-99-GO10337
- OSTI ID:
- 943363
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: (Proceedings of) Windpower 2006 Conference and Exhibition (CD-ROM, Business Track), 4-7 June 2006, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Related Information: For preprint version see NREL/CP-500-39048
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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