Reactive Power Optimal Control of a Wind Farm for Minimizing Collector System Losses

A reactive power/voltage control strategy is proposed that uses wind turbines as distributed reactive power sources to optimize the power flow in large-scale wind farms and reduce the overall losses of the collector system. A mathematical model of loss optimization for the wind farm collector systems is proposed based on a reactive power/voltage sensitivity analysis; a genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm are used to validate the optimization performances. The simulation model is established based on a large-scale wind farm. The results of multiple scenarios show that the proposed strategy is superior to the traditional methods with regard to the reactive power/voltage control of the wind farm and the loss reduction of the collector system. Furthermore, the advantages in terms of annual energy savings and environmental protection are also estimated.