Analysis and Damping of Mechanical Resonance of Wind Power Generators Contributing to Frequency Regulation

Wind power generators will become increasingly useful in modern power systems; therefore, they should be able to support the system frequency in a way similar to that of conventional generators. Droop and virtual inertia are the most reported methods in the literature. However, their impact on the generator and system frequency stability, when the double-mass mechanical dynamics of a wind power generator are considered, has not been addressed thoroughly. In this paper, small-signal modeling, analysis, and eigenvalues studies are used to show that incorporating a wind power generator in the frequency regulation can expose its shaft to forces stimulating its natural resonance frequency dynamics and lead to instability. This paper shows that the mechanical resonance of frequency-regulating wind generators must be studied and enhanced not individually but as a part of the whole power system stability analyses. To overcome the stability problem caused by implementing frequency regulation in wind generators, this paper investigates different alternatives to stabilize the generator dynamics and, at the same time, minimize undesirable interference in the conventional wind power generator controllers. Time-domain simulation results validate the analytical results and discussions.