Supervisory Wind Farm Control

The typical task of the supervisory controller is to set the operating mode of each turbine, in particular the active and reactive power set-points, in response to what is needed by the electric grid for frequency and voltage stability. A wind farm supervisory controller has objectives that can be grouped into four categories: maximize energy production, minimize fluctuating loads on the wind turbines, provide ancillary services to the electric grid, and handle faults. Wind turbines are equipped with a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system that sends sensor measurements to the wind farm operator. The design of a wind farm supervisory control algorithm requires a model of the wind farm system. This chapter introduces a wind farm level control that can be used to more intelligently operate a wind farm to allow both better integration with the grid and more flexible operation.