Supervisory Wind Farm Control

The typical task of the supervisory controller is to set the operating mode of each turbine, in particular the active and reactive power set‐points, in response to what is needed by the electric grid for frequency and voltage stability. A wind farm supervisory controller has objectives that can be grouped into four categories: maximize energy production, minimize fluctuating loads on the wind turbines, provide ancillary services to the electric grid, and handle faults. Wind turbines are equipped with a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system that sends sensor measurements to the wind farm operator. The design of a wind farm supervisory control algorithm requires a model of the wind farm system. This chapter introduces a wind farm level control that can be used to more intelligently operate a wind farm to allow both better integration with the grid and more flexible operation.