Impact of Increasing Distributed Wind Power and Wind Turbine Siting on Rural Distribution Feeder Voltage Profiles: Preprint

Many favorable wind energy resources in North America are located in remote locations without direct access to the transmission grid. Building transmission lines to connect remotely-located wind power plants to large load centers has become a barrier to increasing wind power penetration in North America. By connecting utility-sized megawatt-scale wind turbines to the distribution system, windpower supplied to consumers could be increased greatly. However, the impact of including megawatt-scale wind turbines on distribution feeders needs to be studied. The work presented here examined the impact that siting and power output of megawatt-scale wind turbines have on distribution feeder voltage. This is the start of work to present a general guide to megawatt-scale wind turbine impact onthe distribution feeder and finding the amount of wind power that can be added without adversely impacting the distribution feeder operation, reliability, and power quality.