Comparison of two voltage control strategies for a wind power plant

Larger percentages of wind power penetration translate to more demanding requirements from grid codes. Recently, voltage support at the point of connection has been introduced by several grid codes from around the world, thus, making it important to analyze this control when applied to wind power plants. This paper addresses the analysis of two different voltage control strategies for a wind power plant, i.e. decentralized and centralized voltage control schemes. The analysis has been performed using the equivalent and simplified transfer functions of the system. Using this representation, it is possible to investigate the influence of the plant control gain, short circuit ratio, and time delays on the system stability, as well as the fulfillment of the design requirements. The implemented plant voltage control is based on a slope voltage controller, which calculates the references to be sent to the wind turbines, according to the slope gain and the difference between the reference and measured voltage at the point of connection. The results show that for a system where the time delay between the central control and the actuators is not negligible, the performance of a decentralized voltage control is better than the centralized one in terms of time reaction, disturbance rejection, and short-circuit ratio (SCR) dependency. However, for a system with reduced time delay (10 ms) the centralized scheme can have a performance similar to the decentralized one, in the SCR range of interest.