Design and commissioning of active generator constraint for an offshore windfarm

The UK Government´s target on renewable energy is promoting an increasing interest in offshore wind energy in the south east of England. Many of the proposed offshore windfarms are adjacent to rural areas remote from load centres. As a result, the connection of these offshore windfarms will require the building of new onshore circuits to transport the electricity generated into high load areas. EDF Energy successfully provided connection to a 76MW¹ offshore windfarm near Great Yarmouth (see Figure 1) by using an intelligent control system to utilise the additional capacity available during intact network conditions, while sending “turn down” or constraint signals to the windfarm during fault conditions when there is insufficient circuit capacity. This approach resulted in considerable cost savings over a more typical reinforcement solution