Fault handling for a wind farm with an internal DC collection grid

Journal article, 2012

As a result of the increased wind power penetration, there are increased requirements for robustness of the wind farms during disturbances and faults. The wind farms are required to stay connected during short grid faults, and also, the disturbances as a result of internal faults should be minimized. In this paper, the fault ride-through properties during external faults for a wind farm with an internal direct current (DC) grid are investigated. A safe detection of the fault is derived, as well as the reconnection procedure after the fault has been cleared. Also, the operation during internal faults has been investigated, focusing on the faults in the DC bus. It has been shown that the wind farm with an internal DC grid can operate through faults in the external grid and reconnect well within the requirements stated in the grid codes. Further, methods for detection of internal faults are derived, and it was shown that a faulted part can be disconnected and the non-faulted parts can be back in operation within 100?ms using a DC breaker in each radial and within 300?ms without DC breakers.