Economical reactive power provision for an offshore transmission technology

In this paper economical provision of reactive power in an offshore transmission system has been investigated for a 295 MW offshore wind farm, located off the Dutch coast. The final objective of the design is to follow the Dutch grid code requirements, but in this paper the focus has been mostly on achieving unity power factor at the grid entry point (GEP). In this regard, two different approaches for reactive power provision have been implemented, both for a 150kV and 220kV AC transmission voltage level. Each case has been scrutinized using steady state electrical system design and analysis tool, EeFarm-II [1]. Afterwards, the cases are compared and discussed mostly based on the estimated investment costs, energy losses, and resulting levelized cost of transported energy averaged over the lifetime of the system.