Document Type

Theses, Masters

Rights

Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence

Publication Details

Successfully submitted for the award of Master of Philosophy to the Technological University Dublin, September, 2011.

Abstract

The electricity sector in Ireland has undergone a number of changes in the last 20 years. In the early 90’s the fuel mix was predominantly fossil fuel based with a very small percentage of renewables on the system. The electricity generation portfolio was dominated by coal/gas/peat fired power stations which used large synchronous machines to generate electricity. These synchronous machines provided the necessary system inertia and kept the system frequency stable. However, rising fuel costs, dwindling fossil fuel supplies, climate change etc. has driven the growth of renewable energy especially in the electricity sector. Current targets for renewable energy in the electricity sector are set at 40% by 2020. This is outlined in detail in the RES-E targets. As of July 2011, approximately 1700MW of renewable generation capacity was connected to the Irish power system with wind been the largest contributor. Furthermore, in April 2011 wind generation output reached 1323MW. With current projections indicating somewhere between 3000-5000MW of wind energy on the system by 2020, serious concerns are beginning to be raised especially in the area of system stability. With the percentage of electricity generated from wind turbines increasing, it is vital to ensure that this wind generation is not needlessly disconnected from the system. This project focuses on the interface protection requirements to determine if a loosing of the protection requirements could aid system stability. The project will also look at international practice in regards to interface protection requirements with a view to determining if certain international practices could be adopted on the Irish power system. This project will focus mainly on the Doubly Fed Induction Generator wind turbine as this is the predominant turbine on the system. This project will be carried out in PSS/E simulation software.

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