Equivalent Network for Wind Farm Harmonic Assessments

There is a global commitment to tackle climate change which is evidenced by a huge surge in the uptake of renewable generation, mainly wind in the energy supply industries. Against this background, the effects of these vast numbers of connections to transmission and distribution system will have a critical impact on the standard and quality of supply in the network. In the U.K., utilities are required to perform harmonic assessments for large nonlinear loads. From an engineering perspective, it is imperative that these assessments are done accurately, efficiently, and effectively to ensure that all present and future connections can be accommodated without any problems. This paper presents a network reduction method for reducing detailed low-voltage wind farms networks to assess the effects of its connection onto a main interconnected transmission system. The rationale and method for this assessment is presented with a comparison of results against current approaches, such as IEC current aggregation, to demonstrate and prove its validity and effectiveness.