A Smart Switch Configuration and Reliability Assessment Method for Large-Scale Offshore Wind Farm Electrical Collector System

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel switch configuration and a reliability assessment method for large-scale offshore wind farm electrical systems, enhancing fault recovery and reliability through optimization and strategic reconfiguration.

Contribution

It proposes a new ECS switch configuration and a reliability assessment method that improves computational efficiency and reliability in offshore wind farm electrical systems.

Findings

The proposed RA method outperforms traditional Monte-Carlo simulations in efficiency and accuracy.

Network reconfiguration strategies significantly enhance ECS reliability.

The switch configuration enables effective post-fault network recovery.

Abstract

With the development of offshore wind farms (OWFs) in far-offshore and deep-sea areas, each OWF could contain more and more wind turbines and cables, making it imperative to study high-reliability electrical collector system (ECS) for OWF. Enlightened by active distribution network, for OWF, we propose an ECS switch configuration that enables post-fault network recovery, along with a reliability assessment (RA) method based on optimization models. It can also determine the optimal normal state and network reconfiguration strategies to maximize ECS reliability. Case studies on several OWFs demonstrate that the proposed RA method is more computationally efficient and accurate than the traditional sequential Monte-Carlo simulation method. Moreover, the proposed switch configuration, in conjunction with the network reconfiguration strategy and proper topology, provides significant benefits to ECS reliability.