Utilizing of Static Synchronous Compensator for Reducing the Output Harmonic Distortions of Wind Turbine

Due to the variable and non-uniform nature of wind speed, using the variable speed wind power plants equipped with induction generators has advantages over the fixed speed wind power plants; however, it also contains some disadvantages such as consuming a large amount of reactive current in the power grid and causes voltage drop and instability. The use of static synchronous compensator or STATCOM is one of the key methods to improve the power profile in wind farms. STATCOM can control the voltage dynamics, improve transient stability, eliminate power fluctuations in the transmission network, and control the real and reactive power. Regarding to the fluctuations in electricity generated in wind farms, the presented case study proposed methods to improve the active power and compensate reactive power using the STATCOM in wind systems by modeling in Simulink environment of MATLAB software. According to the simulation results, by applying the STATCOM to the studied system, changes in active power and reactive power generated from the wind farm are significantly reduced. In addition, studies in terms of total harmonic distortion (THD) show that by employing STATCOM, the amount of output voltage distortion is vastly decreased.