Wind farm integration in a harmonic environment

Designing and constructing wind farms free of harmonics remain an ongoing challenge for the power industry. To ensure system stability and asset longevity, locally generated harmonics should be regularly monitored, evaluated and filtered when exceeding industry standard limits. This paper investigates harmonic impacts on wind farms under various operating conditions. MATLAB simulation was conducted to model and evaluate the system for different frequencies. As a comparison, real data was collected from various grid points (substation, wind farm, capacitor and load). Harmonic currents and voltages of incoming and outgoing feeders were measured up to the 49th harmonic. Current and voltage waveforms were transformed from time domain to frequency domain, with the objective to identify resonance circuits resulting from the addition of capacitor banks and variable speed drives. Future research opportunities and recommendations to limit/minimize harmonics are advanced.