Wind power development in India and related grid connectivity

Wind Power is one of the clean substitute of fossil fuel based polluting power plants in India. Traditional wind turbines are equipped with induction generators. Unfortunately, induction generators require reactive power from the grid to operate. Sometimes weaker grids are not capable of supplying required reactive power and some capacitor compensation is often used. Variable speed wind turbines with synchronous generators directly coupled with the grids are also having some inherent demerits and are not grid friendly.

This paper compare numerous types of generators of wind farms, namely, squirrel cage induction, wound rotor induction, synchronous with permanent magnet and synchronous with wired field and analyses grid integration aspects of these wind generators. Of the four generator types mentioned above, the first two types offer advantages to wind farm power plants. Comparing these two, synchronous generators with permanent magnet are found to be significantly superior to the squirrel cage induction generator.