Due to the continuous resources’ reduction and cost increase of conventional fossil fuel along
with the global trend to decrease the greenhouse effect, clean energy production from
renewable sources has been given a global great concern. Among renewable energy sources,
wind energy conversion systems have received a worldwide notable attention. It is expected
that more than 10% of the global electricity demand will to be generated by wind energy
conversion systems by the year 2020. During their early implementation stage, wind turbines
were to be disconnected during abnormal and fault conditions within the electricity grid it is
connected to. Owing to the fact that current wind installations supply a significant portion of
the load demand, disconnecting windfarms may lead to business interruption and
discontinuity of power supply to the end user. As such, transmission line operators have
developed strict grid codes that wind turbine generator must meet to maintain its connection
to support the grid during various fault conditions. To comply with these codes, flexible AC
transmission systems have been widely used with current wind energy conversion systems to
modulate reactive and/or active power at the point of common coupling of the wind turbine
generator and the grid.
This book presents the applications of various flexible ac transmission system devices to wind
energy conversion systems. Devices such as unified power flow controllers, superconducting
magnetic energy storage and static synchronous compensator are covered in this book.
Topologies, control systems along with case studies of the aforementioned devices are
presented and discussed.
This book will be useful for postgraduate research students, upper-division electrical
engineering students and practicing engineers.