New Pathways to Future Grid Compliance for Wind Power Plants

Over the last decade, the rapid growth of wind power is driving an increase of efforts in defining the frameworks and rules for the connection of wind power plants (WPPs) through the grid codes and standards, making testing/validation more demanding and complex for wind turbine (WT) manufacturers and WPP developers. Traditionally, WT manufacturers carry out grid compliance tests at full-scale prototype turbines whereas WPP developers and Transmission System Operators (TSOs) mainly perform studies for new WPPs based on offline RMS and EMT simulations. Until now, these strategies have been sufficient for ensuring grid compliance of WTs and WPPs, however moving forward the wind sector needs new testing methods to meet the increasing WT capacity, WPP complexity, and deployment pace to achieve society’s desired sustainability targets. In this paper, the emerging strategies that target these challenges are presented as: a) subsystems and component testing of WTs specified in IEC 61400-21-4; b) - hardware-in-the-loop (HiL) real time simulation for WT/WPP control and protection appraisals (future 61400-21-5). Finally, a future outlook is given on the importance of addressing model validation and how these strategies can be complemented with other modern analytical tools such as artificial intelligence/machine learning, data-driven dynamic modelling, digital twin technology, and software-in-the-loop (SiL) real time simulation.