Development of a New Procedure for Reliability Modeling of Wind Turbine Generators

A method for determining the impact of wind generation on system reliability is developed. This method combines the effects of wind turbine forced outage rates and varying power output due to wind speed variations. Since individual wind turbines on a windfarm all have an output related to wind speed, each turbine's output cannot be assumed to be independent random variables. Because of this situation, special steps must be taken in der to arrive at the cumulative distribution function for the windfarm. This distribution function may be combined with the system distribution function using simple convolution and so the windfarm can be easily incorporated into a Loss of Load Expectation computer program. The method can then be used to determine the effective load carrying capability of a windfarm and also to supply better estimates of the benefits of wind generation to the overall system.