Wind farm contribution to frequency regulation by distributed adaptive kinetic energy control

This paper proposes a control technique to provide the contribution of wind power generators to primary frequency regulation in electric power systems. The kinetic energy kept by wind generators is used to temporarily modulate their power delivery for contributing to the grid frequency regulation. The control parameters are suitably tuned in order to maximize the contribution of each wind generator, as function of the current wind speed. A look-up table is therefore built allowing the adaptation of the control action to the different dynamical states of the generators and obtaining, in this way, an optimal power response of the whole wind farm. An approach for allowing the wind farm to provide virtual inertia is also proposed. A detailed model of a large wind farm connected to the grid has been implemented in a dedicated simulation environment to test the effectiveness of the proposed control strategies.