A Comparative Study of Harmonic Distortion Assessment for an Offshore Wind Farm System

The offshore wind farm has become a growing focus in the renewable energy development and may cause significant harmonic distortion in power systems. Since each wind turbine can be regarded as a harmonic source, the accurate assessment of harmonic distortion produced by a wind farm is a crucial issue for the wind farm operation. When simulating harmonic sources, the model selections can substantially impact the calculated harmonic distortion results. Therefore, the accurate modeling of harmonic sources for the wind turbines becomes an indispensable issue. This paper aims to evaluate harmonic distortion in an offshore wind farm system under each wind turbine’s rated output. The study cases compare the differences in simulation results between the harmonic source based on the IEC 61000-3-6 and the DIgSILENT unbalanced phase correction (UPC) models. Then, the findings are reported to for harmonic assessment of an offshore wind farm.