Comparison of Synchronous Condenser and STATCOM for Wind Farms in Weak Grids

When wind farms are integrated in weak grids, stability issues such as low-frequency oscillations arise. The grid industry used synchronous condensers instead of Static Synchronous Compensator (STATCOM) to improve stability. The goal of this paper is to compare performance of the two VAR devices on stability improvement for grid-interconnected wind farms. The topology structure and operation principle of the system with a wind farm, a synchronous condenser or a STATCOM are presented. The simulation is performed in the MATLAB/SimPowerSystems environment. Simulation results show that the synchronous condenser can effectively improve stability of the power system even without reactive power injection, while STATCOM only enhances system strength through reactive power compensation.