Effect of wind generation on small-signal stability — A New Zealand Example

The impact of increasing the amount of wind generation on the damping performance of the New Zealand power system is assessed. A comparison is made between the damping performance of (i) a base case scenario which has no wind generation (except for existing wind farms) and (ii) a corresponding scenario in which wind generation is introduced to the system by displacing an equivalent amount of synchronous generation. The damping performance of the pre- and post-wind scenarios is compared, based on the eigenvalues of a linearised model of the system. Small-signal models of the New Zealand power system are developed as well as generic small-signal models of a number of different types of wind energy converter (WEC) technologies. The sensitivity of the system damping performance to the type of WEC technology, type of voltage control, variation in the wind farm power output and level of system loading is assessed.