Black Start and Island Operation Capabilities of Wind Power Plants

Current practice of wind turbines’ start-up relies on the electricity available at the network that they are connected. Hence, in case of a long duration of electricity shortage, external auxiliary power supplies are needed for starting and running the wind turbines or at least for powering their internal auxiliary loads. The state of the art wind turbines with power electronics based converters can be equipped with functions such that they can start and run without the need for external auxiliary power supplies; and furthermore wind power plants composed of the state of the art wind turbines can form grid voltage and operate as a stiff voltage source, as long as wind blows. This can help fast and environmental friendly black start solutions by wind turbines for power system restoration and also use of cost effective offshore HVDC converters (e.g. diode rectifier) as well.

Additionally, this would help to avoid today’s necessity of auxiliary diesel generators for offshore wind power plants, which in turn would increase reliability and decrease cost. In this paper the background and existing solutions for wind turbine and wind power plant (self) start-up and island operation are presented, while the challenges are identified as future focus areas.