Why is capacitor bank used in wind turbine?

A traditional way of enhancing reactive power support at wind farms is with mechanically switched capacitor banks. Restoring the power factor towards unity in this way helps maintain a constant voltage at the point of connection to the grid.

What is pitch and yaw in wind turbine?

Modern wind turbines use large turntable bearings at the root of each blade to enable pitch angle changes and thus aerodynamic performance and load control. Yaw bearings are used for angular realignment of the nacelle into the predominant wind direction.

How does capacitor bank work?

A Capacitor Bank is a group of several capacitors of the same rating that are connected in series or parallel with each other to store electrical energy . The resulting bank is then used to counteract or correct a power factor lag or phase shift in an alternating current (AC) power supply.

What is the difference between fixed and variable speed wind turbines?

The fixed speed wind turbine absorbs the high amount of reactive power in the excitation process so that a capacitor bank will be added as reactive power compensation. Variable speed wind turbines can operate at a wide range of wind speeds with maximum power conversion efficiency.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of a fixed speed turbines?

The fixed-speed wind turbine has the advantage of being simple, robust and reliable and well-proven. And the cost of its electrical parts is low. Its disadvantages are an uncontrollable reactive power consumption, mechanical stress and limited power quality control.

What is a switched capacitor bank?

Wind farms are typically required to be able to operate within a power factor of +/- 0.95. In order to achieve this range of operation, switched capacitor banks are used to supply bulk reactive power to the system when the generators approach their reactive power limits.

How to control capacitors in a wind farm?

One traditional approach to a capacitor control scheme would find fixed open and closed thresholds for the capacitors, an approach that does not adapt to changes in the wind farm.

What is the function of capacitor bank in power distribution?

In electric power distribution, capacitor banks are used for power-factor correction. These banks are needed to counteract inductive loading from devices like electric motors and transmission lines, thus making the load appear to be mostly resistive.

What is a MEMS capacitor bank?

In the radio-frequency (RF) and wireless spaces, tiny micro-electro-mechanical systems, or MEMS, tunable capacitor banks are used to augment or replace full-size electromechanical tunable capacitors. Hundreds of tiny MEMS capacitors of various values are controlled and tuned digitally via a serial peripheral interface (SPI).