Wind power systems are being integrated increasingly into the power grid because of their large capacity and easy access to the transmission grid. The reliability of wind power plants is very important and the elimination of protective relay’s malfunctions is essential to the mitigation of power quality problems due to the frequent starts and stops of high capacity wind generators. In this study, the problem of frequent false operations of the protective relays are analyzed using real data as line voltages, line currents, and wind speed. A new re-coordination of the overcurrent relay (OCR) based on the wind speed is proposed to avoid frequent operations of relays and tested for a grid-connected wind farm. This study verifies that the false actions by the OCRs that are not accompanied by actual electrical faults in the power grid or wind power system can be solved by the appropriate re-coordination of the OCR.

This paper describes the detailed analysis of a reactor application for a power plant to mitigate the voltage rise of a distribution line (DL) caused by the connection of distributed resources (DRs). The maximum capacity of renewable energy generators (REGs) that meets the acceptable voltage rise of a DL and the necessary capacity of the reactor to mitigate that voltage rise according to the different types of REGs are analyzed. The re-coordination of a protection relay and the loss of generation revenue as well as the installation location of a reactor are described. Finally, the ON/OFF conditions of the reactor, such as the magnitudes of the grid voltage and generator voltage, and the duration time of the voltage rise are analyzed. As the voltage rise is mitigated and self-limited in small power plants, it is confirmed that the capacity of the DRs connected to the DL can be increased through a field demonstration.