Transient Studies in Large Offshore Wind Farms, Employing Detailed Circuit Breaker Representation

Switching overvoltages (SOV) are considered a possible source of component failures experienced in existing offshore wind farms (OWFs). The inclusion of sufficiently accurate and validated models of the main electrical components in the OWF in the simulation tool is therefore an important issue in order to ensure reliable switching operations. Transient measurement results in an OWF are compared with simulation results in PSCAD EMTDC and DigSILENT Power Factory. A user-defined model of the vacuum circuit breaker (VCB) is included in both tools, capable of simulating multiple prestrikes during the closing operation. An analysis of the switching transients that might occur in OWFs will be made on the basis of the validated model, and the importance of the inclusion of a sufficiently accurate representation of the VCB in the simulation tool will be described. The inclusion of the VCB model in PSCAD greatly improves the simulation results, whereas little improvement is found in DigSILENT. Based on the transient study it is found that the simulated SOV can be up to 60% higher at the sending end when using the detailed VCB representation compared to the built-in switch, which emphasises the need for accurate representation of the VCB for energisation studies

Vacuum circuit breaker modelling for the assessment of transient recovery voltages:application to various network configurations

Vacuum circuit breakers (VCBs) are widely used for medium voltage applications when low maintenance, long operating life, and large number of allowable switching cycles are required. The accurate estimation of the transient recovery voltages (TRVs) associated with their switching operation is indispensable for both VCB sizing and insulation coordination studies of the components nearby the switching device. In this respect, their accurate modelling, which is the object of the paper, becomes crucial. In particular, the paper illustrates two applications of a VCB model, which show the model capabilities of simulating TRVs due to opening/closing operation, namely the switching of large electrical motors and the switching of cables collecting offshore wind farms (OWFs). Data from digital fault recorder (DFR) in a water-pumping plant and from a measurement campaign in an OWF using a high-bandwidth GPS-synchronised measurement system, respectively, are used for model validation. It is shown that the inclusion of detailed VCB models significantly improves the agreement between the measurements related to both pre- and restrikes and the corresponding simulation results obtained by using two well-known electromagnetic transient simulation environments, namely, EMTP-RV and PSCAD/EMTDC. The procedure adopted for the identification of the VCB model parameters is described