Impact of synthetic inertia from wind power on the protection/control schemes of future power systems: Simulation study

Future power systems face several challenges; one of them is the use of high power converters that decouple new energy sources from the AC power grid. This decreases the total system inertia affecting its ability to overcome system frequency's disturbances. The wind power industry has created a controller to enable inertial response on wind turbines generators: Artificial, Emulated, Simulated, or Synthetic Inertial. This paper deals with issues related to the synthetic inertia of wind turbines based on full-converters and their effect on the frequency protection/control schemes during the recovery period after system frequency disturbances happen. The main contribution of this paper is to demonstrate (based on simulations) the recovery period of under-frequency transients on future power systems which integrate wind turbines with synthetic inertia capability not completely avoid worse scenarios in terms of under-frequency load shedding. The extra power delivered from a wind turbine during frequency disturbances can substantially reduce the rate of change of frequency providing time for the active governors to respond. However, synthetic inertia might not completely avoid under-frequency load shedding.