Control of electric output of a wind park

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9366227-B2
Application number	US-201113820090-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Aug 29, 2011
Priority date	Aug 31, 2010
Publication date	Jun 14, 2016
Grant date	Jun 14, 2016

Abstract

A method of controlling an electric output of a wind park is carried out jointly by wind turbines with their local wind-turbine controllers and a central wind-park controller. The central wind-park controller generates a reference value for a wind turbine, based on the measured value of an electric quantity at a point of common measurement, and provides it to the local wind-turbine controller. The local wind-turbine controller produces a voltage or a reactive-power in the electric grid at the location of the wind turbine corresponding to the reference value, but which is corrected by a local correction. The local correction takes into account a voltage or a reactive-power change expected at the point of common measurement for the electric current supplied by the wind turbine due to the electric impedance of the grid connection to the point of common measurement.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A method of controlling an electric output of a wind park, the wind park comprising wind turbines, local wind-turbine controllers, a central wind-park controller, a point of common measurement, and an electric grid connecting the wind turbines and the point of common measurement, wherein grid connections between the wind turbines and the point of common measurement have electric impedances;
the method being carried out jointly by the wind turbines with their local wind-turbine controllers and the central wind-park controller, the method comprising:
producing electric currents, by the wind turbines, and supplying the electric currents to the electric grid;
measuring a value of an electric quantity at the point of common measurement and providing the measurement result to the central wind-park controller;
generating, by the central wind-park controller, at least one of a voltage-reference value and a reactive-power-reference value for a wind turbine, based on the measured value of the electric quantity at the point of common measurement, and providing the at least one of a voltage-reference value and a reactive-power-reference value to the local wind-turbine controller of the wind turbine; and
causing the wind turbine, by the local wind-turbine controller, to produce at least one of a voltage and a reactive power in the electric grid at the location of the wind turbine which corresponds to the at least one of a voltage-reference value and a reactive-power-reference value, but which is corrected by a local correction produced by the local wind-turbine controller;
wherein the local correction takes into account at least one of a voltage change and a reactive-power change expected at the point of common measurement for the electric current supplied by the wind turbine due to the electric impedance of the grid connection between the wind turbine and the point of common measurement, said electric current taken into account by the correction being determined locally at the wind turbine.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising controlling the electric output of the wind park by means of a feedback control loop with overlaid feed-forward controls,
the feedback control loop being formed by the wind-park controller comparing the electric quantity measured at the point of common measurement with a central target value and deriving the reference values for the wind turbines from the comparison, and the local wind-turbine controllers causing the wind turbines to produce at least one of a certain voltage and a certain reactive power in the electric grid at the locations of the wind turbines, which in turn influences the electric quantity to be measured at the point of common measurement,
the overlaid feed-forward controls being formed by the local corrections by the wind-turbine controllers, causing the wind turbines to produce an output corrected for a voltage change or a reactive-power change expected at the point of common measurement for the electric currents supplied by the wind turbines due to the electric impedances of the grid connections between the wind turbines and the point of common measurement.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the point of common measurement is a point of common coupling of the wind park to an electric utility grid, or a point in an electric wind-park grid upstream of the point of common coupling, or a point in the utility grid downstream of the point of common coupling.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein there is a voltage and a reactive power in the electric grid at the point of common measurement, and wherein the electric quantity measured at the point of common measurement is at least one of the voltage and the reactive power at the point of common measurement.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein generating the reference value by the central wind-park controller comprises comparing the electric quantity measured at the point of common measurement, or another quantity derived from it, with a target value, and obtaining the reference value as a result of the comparison.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein generation of the reference value by the central wind-park controller comprises mapping the electric quantity measured by a droop function to the reference value.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the reference values generated by the central wind-park controller are the same values for all the wind turbines, or are values proportional to each other, or are individual values for different wind turbines.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein a response by the local wind-turbine controller to a change in the central wind-park controller's reference value has a time constant, and wherein a response to the local correction has another time constant, and wherein the time constant of the response to the wind-park controller is bigger than that to the local correction.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein at least one of voltage and reactive power is measured in the electric grid locally at the wind turbine, and the local wind-turbine controller compares the locally measured value of the at least one of voltage and reactive power with the central wind-park controller's reference value to generate a local error signal on which control of the wind turbine is based, thereby forming a local feedback control loop.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein the local correction is applied downstream of the local-error-signal generation, at the local-error-signal generation, or upstream of the local-error-signal generation.

11. The method of claim 9 , wherein
the local error signal is transformed into a local current reference,
the local correction is provided in the form of a current correction,
and the local current reference is corrected by the current correction.

12. The method of claim 9 , wherein
the local correction is provided in a form corresponding to the central wind-park controller's reference, which is in the form of a voltage correction or reactive-power correction,
and the local correction corrects the central wind-park controller's reference upstream of the local-error-signal generation, or corrects the locally measured voltage or reactive-power value, or is taken into account in the local-error signal generation.

13. The method of claim 1 , wherein the local correction is determined on the basis of a function, wherein the electric current produced by the wind turbine is a variable of the function, wherein the electric current is not known to the wind-park controller a priori, because at least in an operating mode below nominal wind speed the electric current produced is governed by the wind speed, which may fluctuate and is first felt by the wind turbine.

14. The method of claim 1 , wherein the electric current produced by the wind turbine can be represented by a total current, an active component of the current, and a reactive component of the current, and
wherein the local correction is determined on the basis of a function which has at least two additive terms,
one of the additive terms depending on the total current, and
the other additive term depending on the active component of the current produced by the wind turbine.

15. A wind park, comprising wind turbines, local wind-turbine controllers, a central wind-park controller, a point of common measurement, and an electric grid connecting the wind turbines and the point of common measurement, wherein grid connections between the wind turbines and the point of common measurement have electric impedances;
wherein the wind park is arranged to control its electric output by jointly controlling the wind turbines by m

Assignees

• Garcia Jorge Martinez
• Vestas Wind Sys As

Inventors

• Garcia Jorge Martinez

Classifications

• Y02E40/30

  Reactive power compensation · CPC title

• H02J3/381

  Dispersed generators · CPC title

• H02J2101/28

  Wind energy · CPC title

• Y02E10/763

  Cross-Sectional Technologies · mapped topic

• H02J3/386

  Electricity · mapped topic