Voltage and frequency control in offshore wind turbines connected to isolated oil platform power systems

Offshore wind turbines have potential to supply offshore oil and gas platforms in the North Sea with electric energy. For remote located facilities it is attractive to pursue a solution where the wind turbines and oil platform operate in an isolated system. To study the operational properties of a system with these characteristics is necessary to identify possible advantages and disadvantages. This paper demonstrates how added voltage and frequency control in wind turbines equipped with full power electronic converters can improve the voltage and frequency stability in offshore oil and gas installations. The work is based on an electrical simulation model built in the PSCAD software. In the proposed transient simulation scenarios, the voltage dip is reduced from 16 % to 6 %, while the frequency overshoot is reduced from 97 % to 25 %. These are significant improvements that should be taken into consideration when offshore wind power is evaluated as power supply to oil installations. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of SINTEF Energi AS. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.