Abstract:The growth of electrical demand increases the need of renewable energy sources, such as wind energy, to meet that need. Electrical power losses are an important factor when wind farm location and size are selected. The capitalized cost of constant power losses during the life of a wind farm will continue to high levels. During the operation period, a method to determine if the losses meet the requirements of the design is significantly needed. This article presents a Simulink simulation of wind farm integration into the grid; the aim is to achieve a better understanding of wind variation impact on grid losses. The real power losses are set as a function of the annual variation, considering a Weibull distribution. An analytical method has been used to select the size and placement of a wind farm, taking into account active power loss reduction. It proposes a fast linear model estimation to find the optimal capacity of a wind farm based on DC power flow and graph theory. The results show that the analytical approach is capable of predicting the optimal size and location of wind turbines. Furthermore, it revealed that the annual variation of wind speed could have a strong effect on real power loss calculations. In addition to helping to improve utility efficiency, the proposed method can develop specific designs to speeding up integration of wind farms into grids.

High penetration of wind energy into the network may introduce stability and power quality problems due to the fluctuating nature of the wind and the increasing complexity of the power system. This paper describes a novel approach to voltage and power control of a radial electrical distribution network, using a wind farm. The wind farm consists of seven 75 kW induction generators (DFIG) supplying two AC/DC converters. The feed structure of the DFIG allows operating the system conversion in a wide range of speed variations. That is why it is a recommended solution, due to its capacity to increase the generator power to twice its nominal power; consequently, the system's size and cost are reduced. Another advantage is that the system is decoupled with an electrical network, so the disturbances do not affect the DFIG and this also avoids the problems of coupling the machine to the power grid. Through a 14-node distribution network, this study proves that the method is feasible. A simulation work was carried out with the software MATLAB/Simulink. The results obtained prove that this control is suitable for regulating the desired power flows in a power network and providing the best voltage profile in the system, as well as minimizing the system transmission losses when inserting the wind farm into the electrical network.