Protection for a Wind Turbine Generator in a Large Wind Farm

This paper proposes a protection algorithm for a wind turbine generator (WTG) in a large wind farm. To minimize the outage section, a protection relay for a WTG should operate instantaneously for an internal fault or a connected feeder fault, whereas the relay should not operate for an internal fault of another WTG connected to the same feeder or an adjacent feeder fault. In addition, the relay should operate with a delay for an inter-tie fault or a grid fault. An internal fault of another WTG connected to the same feeder or an adjacent feeder fault, where the relay should not operate, is determined based on the magnitude of the positive sequence current. To differentiate an internal fault or a connected feeder fault from an inter-tie fault or a grid fault, the phase angle of the negative sequence current is used to distinguish a fault type. The magnitude of the positive sequence current is then used to decide either instantaneous operation or delayed operation. The performance of the proposed algorithm is verified under various fault conditions with EMTP-RV generated data. The results indicate that the algorithm can successfully distinguish instantaneous operation, delayed operation, or non-operation depending on fault positions and types.