| 05 May 2025
Wind farm inertia forecasting accounting for wake losses, control strategies, and operational constraints
Abstract. Future inverter-based resources (IBRs) must provide grid-forming functionalities to compensate for the declining share of conventional synchronous machines (SMs) in the power generation mix. Specifically, decreasing power system inertia poses a significant challenge to grid frequency stability, as system inertia limits the rate of change of frequency (ROCOF). Conventional grid-following control decouples the physical inertia of wind turbines (WTs) from the grid frequency. Novel grid-forming control methods, such as virtual synchronous machine (VSM) control, provide (virtual) inertia to the system, e.g. by extracting kinetic energy from WTs. Since the grid-forming capability of IBRs depends on volatile operating conditions, future market designs will remunerate inertia provision based on its availability. Thus, estimating grid-forming capabilities of WTs and forecasting inertia of wind farms (WFs) are of interest for both WF and system operators. In this paper, we propose a method to forecast inertia that accounts for wake effects in a WF. The approach is based on mapping forecasted site conditions to each single WT in the WF through a wake model. The resulting inflow conditions are used to predict the WT grid-forming capabilities, taking WT control strategies and operating limits into account.
Competing interests: At least one of the (co-)authors is a member of the editorial board of Wind Energy Science.
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