Smart Energy Laboratory (SEL)
Computational Intelligence Applications (CIA) Laboratory

Department of Electrical Engineering
University of Washington

Low Voltage Ride-Through for Wind Turbines

Low voltage ride-through (LVRT) or fault ride-through (FRT) is one of the challenging requirements for grid connection of large wind power plants. FERC and international regulators have demanded that wind power plants keep wind turbines online to support system frequency in the event of network faults and to stabilize the voltage after the faults are cleared.

This course discusses the behavior of induction generators during faults at the collection point of the plant. The problems associated with faults such as rotor speed excursion, torque oscillations and transient overcurrent are presented. Techniques that are developed to handle the LVRT/FRT that maintained the energy balance and support the reactive power without damaging the turbines are discussed. Several case studies will be presented

Target Audience

Utility engineers
Wind energy field engineers
Wind energy manufacturing engineers
System operators
Maintenance engineers
Wind power producers
Consultants and researchers in wind energy

Course Topics:

Basic Power Electronic Converters for Wind Turbines

Types of Converters
Circuits Architectures
Control Parameters

Energy of Wind

KE of wind
Air power density
Tip Speed ratio
Coefficient of performance
Variable Pitch and Betz limit

Wind Turbines and Systems

Main components
Power flow
Power-speed characteristics
On-shore and off-shore systems
Types of wind turbines

Wind Generators

Induction Generators
Active and Reactive power flow
Adaptive VAR compensators
Doubly-Fed systems
Synchronous Generators

Wind Energy Penetration

Definitions
Wind energy worldwide
Wind energy in USA

Wind Energy Integration

Grid Code
Time Scales for System Operation
Wind Integration Issues

Low Voltage Ride Through

Faults
Protection actions
Stability
LVRT code (US and international)

LVRT Compliance Methods (US and international)

Ramping
Dynamic braking
Dynamic voltage support
Dynamic voltage restorer (DVR)
Storage
Load management