New trend in wind power: build your own wind turbines or retrofit them to connect with the grid

By Cheri Hart, American Superconductor

Connecting with the wind™ – everyone is talking about it, but one company seems to have the business model that works extremely well in the fast paced, international market for wind energy technology. By Cheri Hart, American Superconductor

American Superconductor (AMSC) through its subsidiary AMSC Windtec (Windtec) offers unique opportunities to highly qualified companies who want to enter the wind energy business as fast as possible. They help heavy equipment manufacturers to build their own wind energy systems and AMSC also makes the components that make the wind turbines extra efficient.

By licensing Windtec technology, the business relationship with Windtec will allow companies to have all the necessary technical knowledge and training to basically “build your own wind turbines.” Windtec works side by side with its customers from design through commissioning of their self-manufactured wind turbines.

But AMSC doesn’t stop at just designing and helping manufacturers to get their wind turbines built and certified. AMSC has an established international leadership position in the reactive compensation market, i.e. connecting wind parks to the electrical transmission grid.

Countries and wind energy operators are rushing to implement their share of the European objective of 20% of renewable energy by 2020. According to some resources, wind energy could cover 12-14% of the EU’s electricity consumption by 2020, with a total installed capacity of 180 GW. For example, the wind power sector in Spain has continued dramatic growth and doubled it installed capacity in only three years, and is expected to grow 50 percent by 2010.

At the same time as the demand for wind energy has increased dramatically, government and regulatory agencies around the world have recognized the problem that wind energy can create for the electrical grid if the energy is not conditioned or “compensated.”

Keeping wind turbines online under low voltage conditions is a potential trouble spot that developers and operators need to consider. Transient voltage events that drop voltage below turbine tolerance levels can cause generators to trip offline. This can be accomplished either by the wind turbine manufacturer or with a centralized solution in the wind park substation.

Unlike the dynamic voltage (or VAR) support provided by conventional power sources like coal-fired plants, in many installations reactive power from wind parks are not compensated dynamically or in continuously variable amounts.

Interconnection standards vary from country to country and among individual provinces or states, depending on local grid characteristics and utility requirements. To ensure smooth operation and security of the transmission grid, many countries around the world have adopted interconnection standards for new wind parks that require the wind park to provide certain amounts of reactive compensation, similar to traditional generation. At the same time, some countries are also installing regulations that apply to existing wind parks with older installed systems.

Besides planning for dynamic reactive compensation, wind parks have to maintain low-voltage ride-through (LVRT) capability to assure that the generators remain stable and connected during normally cleared electrical faults on the transmission grid. LVRT requirements are currently defined in many regions of the world where a large number of utility-scale wind parks are being installed.

Many of the European countries have not harmonized regarding regulation of wind power delivery to their transmission grid. Interconnection standards vary according to local grid characteristics and utility-specific requirements. However, the push for increasing wind energy delivery systems is a driving the force to bring about regulatory changes that will protect the security of the electrical grids all over the globe.

In September 2008, AMSC introduced two new patent-pending products that will aid the wind energy developers in their quest to quickly install and commission new wind parks, or to upgrade through retrofit of their existing wind installations.

One AMSC product is designed specifically to install into the electrical converter system, in the nacelle of the new wind turbines, the ability to connect their wind energy to the utility grid. The second product is designed to deal with retrofitting existing installed wind turbines to connect to the grid and includes the LVRT capability so necessary for these installations.

These are not R&D projects. They are available to the market today and their availability gives the regulators additional support to enact requirements to provide support and security to the wind parks that are now, or contemplated for, their electrical grids.
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