Over the last ten years, the global wind energy capacity has increased rapidly and proved to be the fastest developing renewable energy technology and an important competitor to the traditional sources of energy. Design of Wind Power Plants (WPP) has evolved through time with the aim of becoming less expensive and producing energy more efficiently.
Due to the high penetration level of the wind energy into the grid, the TSOs start to impose severe grid codes requirements and expects from WPP to behave like a regular power plant. Therefore having an efficient and a reliable WPP controller is very important.
The main objective of this thesis is to develop a WPP Controller capable to fulfill the most demanding European grid codes, according to ENTSOE, and to control not only the wind turbines but also the ancillary devices (e.g. STATCOM). This thesis also investigates the optimal Q rating for the STATCOM, Capacitor Bank and the Grid Side Converter, based on a technical and economic analysis and different scenarios.
Moreover, the optimal dispatch was analyzed for different WPP control modes (delta, balance, etc) and different control objectives (losses minimization or life time optimization). Finally, a conventional power flow was implemented as well, in order to evaluate the optimal power flow with respect to a benchmark.