IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - November/December 2016 - 27

can result when reactive power compensators switch incorrectly, and this has been a problem when the wind farms are
operating at high power levels.

Grid Events Knock Wind Farms Off the Grid
In China, the events that cause wind farms to trip offline can
be grouped into three broad categories:
✔ short circuit faults within the wind farm collector
system
✔ faults on the local power grid in the vicinity of the
wind farms
✔ disturbances due to incorrect reactive compensation
switching.
We will examine examples of each.

Faults on the Wind Farm Collector System
On 24 February 2011, equipment failed at Qiaoxi No. 1 wind
farm in Jiuquan, Gansu, causing the trip-off of 598 wind turbines and a loss of 847 MW of wind power in Gansu. This
large number of turbine outages led to a frequency drop of
the northwest power system below its 50-Hz normal value
to 49.85 Hz.
Many wind farms in Jiuquan are collected completely by
the 330-kV step-up station. The power is then transmitted to the 750-kV power grid, with a total installed capacity of 2.5 GW in 2011. Figure 2 shows a one-line diagram
of the wind farm cluster and the collector grid structure at
Jiuquan Base.
Wind power output in the Jiuquan cluster was around
1.1 GW in total before the fault took place. All reactive power compensators in the wind farms were in
operation. At time 00:34 on 24 February, a short circuit on Phase C of one 35-kV collecting power cable in

the Qiaoxi wind farm substation occurred. Eleven seconds
later, the single-phase short circuit evolved into a threephase fault, which led to a systemic voltage drop. The
low voltage caused 274 wind turbines in the wind power
cluster to trip, resulting in the loss of nearly 380 MW of
power output. Furthermore, the reactive power compensators installed in the base failed to respond to the tripoff. The resulting surplus reactive power led to overvoltage, causing another 300 wind turbines to trip from the
grid due to overvoltage protection. This added more than
420 MW to the loss of generation. The large power loss
drew the system frequency down below the normal 50 Hz
value, and another 24 wind turbines disconnected from
the grid due to under frequency. This added yet another
40 MW to the power loss.

Faults on the Local Power Grid
On 16 November 2011, a short circuit on the 500-kV power
grid in Guyuan, Hebei Province, caused large numbers of
wind turbines to trip offline. In this incident, 790 wind turbines in 15 wind farms in the cluster tripped and resulted in
a power loss of 1,016 MW.
In Guyuan, a 500-kV substation is connected with
three 220-kV transformer stations in Chabei, Yiyuan, and
Bailongshan. A total of 15 wind farms are connected to the
220- or 110-kV buses of the three transformer substations with
a single 220-kV corridor carrying the output of the wind plant
cluster's output to the 500-kV substation. At the time of the
incident, there were 1,081 wind turbines installed, with a total
capacity of 1,591 MW.
Before the incident took place, there were 934 wind turbines operating with a wind power output of 1,091 MW. In
the late evening (at precisely 22:22:44), a short circuit fault

Dongdaqiao (E) 2
Dongdaqiao (W) 3

Dongdaqiao (E) 3

Dongdaqiao (E) 1

Dongdaqiao (W) 2
Dongdaqiao (W)
(3 × 200 MW)

Dongdaqiao (W) 1

Ganhekou (E) 1

Dongdaqiao (E)
(700 MW)

Ganhekou (E)
(3 × 200 MW)

Yumenzhen
Jiayuguan

Ganhekou (E) 2
Ganhekou (E) 3
Dunhuang
Ganhekou (W) 1
Ganhekou (W) 2
Ganhekou (W) 3

Ganhekou (W)
(3 × 200 MW)

Jiuquan

Guazhou

figure 2. A diagram of the Jiuquan Wind Farm Cluster (2011).
november/december 2016

ieee power & energy magazine

27



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - November/December 2016

IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - November/December 2016 - Cover1
IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - November/December 2016 - Cover2
IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - November/December 2016 - 1
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IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - November/December 2016 - Cover3
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