With a sudden wind gust, a wind diesel system with a large wind turbine penetration can suffer from power system instability, even though it is stable in the steady state condition at the same wind speeds. Short term wind prediction [1] can identify the time taken for a wind front to reach a given site. Hence this suggests that the wind diesel system should be investigated for better frequency and power stability by placing the wind turbines in such a way that the wind turbines experience the wind gust at different times.

A 1.25MVA Caterpillar diesel generator with six NORDEX 150 turbines has been modelled using MATLAB and it has been found that when all the wind turbines experience a sufficiently large wind gust simultaneously, frequency and power control is lost. However, if the turbines are located such that they experience the wind gust at staggered times, the power system is found to become stable for the same gust conditions. Using this concept, for an area with a predominant wind front movement direction, the stability benefits demonstrated.

[1] Damousis, I.G., et al, “A fuzzy model for wind speed prediction and power generation in wind parks using spatial correlation.”, IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion, Vol. 19. No. 2, June 2004, pp352-361.