Australia’s southern coastline lies in the roaring forties, where hundreds of sites have documented average wind speeds above 8 metres per second at 50 metres above ground – the hub height of typical wind generators. Excellent wind potential also exists in southwest Western Australia, southeast South Australia, western Victoria, northern Tasmania and elevated areas of New South Wales and Queensland.

Fulfilling Australia’s wind power goals has put a spotlight on utility grid interconnection standards. Accordingly, Australian utility regulators have been proactive in specifying dynamic voltage requirements for wind farms that are connecting to the grid. These standards also address steady state power factor correction and wind farm capability to ride through low and high voltage situations.

Inasmuch as power derived from wind farms is not inherently predictable or controllable – at least to the degree seen in fossil fuel generation – ‘uncontrolled’ wind generator output creates variable voltages that can result in the need for additional dispatchable generation or reserves. In addition, due to the varying wind farm feed-in capacities, reactive power must be constantly controllable. The practicality of such control at interconnection has now been well demonstrated with various Flexible AC Transmission System (FACTS) devices, static compensators (STATCOMS) or static VAR compensators (SVC). These solutions provide the dynamic reactive power capability that allows wind farms to meet grid interconnection standards such as those now enforced in Australia.

United States-based company American Superconductor Corporation’s (AMSC) D-VAR® solution is a modular and scalable STATCOM that is being used at 35 wind farms around the world. These systems are sited right at the substation connecting wind farms to the grid and stabilising the voltage that is fed into it. The systems are currently serving five wind farms in Australia and New Zealand. These five wind farms are producing a combined total of nearly 500megawatts (MW).

The benefits of interconnection standards compliance, via solutions such as the AMSC D-VAR system, are clear. Compliance with the standards can mitigate voltage sags or swells originating from the transmission grid, which in turn enhances the ability of the wind farm to stay on line and helps to prevent the turbine generators tripping. This also helps maximise the wind farm’s power output, which leads to increased revenues. Capacitor-bank switching events are also minimised, thereby reducing switch maintenance costs. Finally, and most significantly, overall grid interconnection costs are minimised.

In its recently released Global Wind 2007 Report, the Global Wind Energy Council predicted that the Pacific region will add approximately 2.3 gigawatts (GW) of new installations between 2008 and 2012, bringing the region’s installed capacity up to 3.5 GW. New Zealand has seen the fastest growth in the region, increasing its wind capacity by 88 per cent in 2007 alone to 322 MW. While wind energy development in Australia slowed in 2007, the recent change in federal government, the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and the country’s 20 per cent by 2020 renewable energy target will see Australia’s massive wind power potential soon realised.

Given the rapid advance in world wind power markets, the unique characteristics of wind generation and the trend toward larger wind parks, more projects will require dynamic reactive compensation as a condition of interconnection. Ultimately, the new interconnection standards are a win-win for all renewable market stakeholders, including and most importantly, electricity consumers.