Wind Farm Surge Arresters Energy Capability and Risk of Failure Analysis
Abstract
This paper presents the analysis of the wind farm surge arresters energy capability in respect to lightning overvoltages. Furthermore, the wind farm surge arresters risk of failure analysis is presented in this paper. These two above mentioned aspects form a vital part of the surge arrester selection procedure for the wind farms. It should be emphasized that the wind farm surge arrester energy capability is, apart from the switching overvoltages, based on the lightning overvoltages as well, to which the wind farm is particularly exposed. Hence, a detailed computational procedure, utilizing the electromagnetic transients program (EMTP), and combined with sophisticated high-frequency wind farm components models, is needed to accomplish this task. This procedure, accompanied with a brief EMTP wind farm model description, will be provided in this paper. The wind farm surge arresters risk of failure analysis is based on the statistical approach, which combines statistical description of the arrester energy absorption failure with the statistical nature of lightning surge occurrences.
