Investigation of Wind Farm Interaction with Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation's Grid

Ethiopia is planning to use wind power plants in addition to the existing hydropower plants to supply the increasing load demand to insure sustainable development. Consequently, large scale wind farms are going to be integrated to EEPCO's (Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation's) grid. This paper is concerned with investigation of interaction of wind farm with EEPCO's grid under transient operating condition. It is mainly concerned with Fault Ride-Through (FRT) capability, which includes voltage recovery at the wind turbines terminal; active and reactive power behaviour of the wind turbines after the fault is cleared. Recently planned wind farms of Ethiopia like Adama and Aisha use Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generator Wind Turbine (PMSG WT). As a result dynamic model of PMSG WT is developed by DIgSILENT PowerFactory simulation tool. Then Adama phase-1 wind farm with 34 PMSG WTs is modelled by using aggregated modelling approach. This model is used to investigate FRT capability and, active and reactive power behaviour of the wind farm by applying three phase short circuit fault. Promising response is observed from the Adama wind farm with PMSG WT when fault occurs on the grid terminal near to the wind farm.