Reactive Power Dispatch Method in Wind Farms to Improve the Lifetime of Power Converter Considering Wake Effect

In Wind Farms (WF), the most popular and commonly implemented active power control method is the Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT). Due to the wake effect, the upstream Wind Turbine (WT) in WFs has more active power generation than the downstream WT at the wind directions and wind speeds that the WF has wake loss. In the case that WTs support the voltage control by reactive power, the upstream WT’s power converter may have shorter lifetime even below the industrial standard. In this paper, based on the analysis of the wake effect, the reactive power capability of the Doubly Fed Induction Generator (DFIG) WT and the lifetime of DFIG WT’s power converter, a reactive power dispatch method is proposed in the WF with DFIG WTs to improve the lifetime of the upstream WT’s power converter. The proposed reactive power dispatch method is analyzed and demonstrated by the simulation on a WF with 80 DFIG WTs. It can be concluded that, compared with the traditional reactive power dispatch method, the proposed method can increase the lifetime of the upstream WT’s power converter.