Harmonic assessment of a Brazilian wind farm regarding reactive power requirements

The constant growth of wind farms in the Brazilian electric system increases the concerns regarding power quality, especially related to harmonic distortions. At the same time, wind generation also becomes relevant in the context of power system stability, operating as ancillary services. One of the requirements of the system operator is the injection of reactive power by the wind farms to maintain the voltage levels. Considering that the actual studies only considers the operation of the wind generators with unitary power factor, the present work aims to evaluate the harmonic impact of Wind farms operating with reactive power injection on the electric system buses. For this purpose two monitoring campaigns in a wind farm of the CPFL Renováveis were performed with different power factors operating modes in the wind generators. These results were utilized in computational studies to evaluate the impact in voltage distortion at the PCC. The results obtained in this work demonstrated a significant impact on the harmonic current generation and in the voltage harmonic distortion due to the reactive power injection by the wind generators of the wind farm.