Control of a wind farm with an internal direct current collection grid

For a high-voltage, direct current connected wind farm, an internal direct current (DC) collection grid is a possible further development that can reduce the weight of the transformers significantly, with average losses for the DC system of 3%. For the internal DC grid, the DC/DC converters control the power flow and thereby also the voltages. In this paper, the control of the DC/DC converters in the wind farm is investigated in detail. The control strategy is presented, and suitable time constants are chosen depending on the switching frequency of the converters. Also, the required capacitor size to keep the voltage variations within 5% of the rated value in the case without communication within the wind farm is derived. It is shown that the control is stable and can handle faults on the external grid without any communication within the wind farm. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.