Wind farm – grid interactions: exploration and development (WinGrid)

The WinGrid (Wind farm - Grid interactions: exploration and development) consortium aims to train the next generation of researchers on future power system integration issues associated with large-scale deployment of wind generation, focussing on the modelling and control aspects of wind turbine design, and the system stability issues and supervisory structures required for robust implementation. The volume of wind installations is growing rapidly, giving rise to various concerns about future power system stability. More sophisticated modelling capability is required to fully assess the growing complexity as we advance towards a 100% RES resilient power system, while new wind generation technologies are emerging which may radically impact how the future system evolves, against a background of more stringent grid code requirements and emerging system service markets. Highly-skilled researchers, capable of solving such problems, are scarce and in high demand by industry. WinGrid comprises an expert group of 10 academics from 8 beneficiary organisations including 7 leading universities and one large company DNV GL across 6 countries. It also has 8 internationally renowned industrial partners (e.g. ABB) ranging from wind turbine developer, transmission system operator, power system analysts and renewable energy consultants from 6 countries. Combined together we provide wide-ranging expertise in power electronics converters, control theory, system stability analysis, power system operation and electricity markets. The ESRs will enjoy a highly integrated, multi-disciplinary training environment, including access to specialist software and hardware-in-the-loop test environments, enriched through secondments with the network of industrial partners. WinGrid will enable critical learning across all training aspects, in order to ensure that comprehensive, robust and implementable solutions are obtained and validated to face the grid integration challenges of the future.