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Abstract—Here, two renewable energy large scale systems, overhead lines and telecoms. A particular form of EMI is
namely wind power farms and solar parks, are treated with caused by electrostatic charging of components of WP
examples concerning EMI/EMC. We start describing the systems. In particular, rotor blades (made from composites) are
activities of CIGRE working groups C4.30 and C4.44 as able to build-up charge by friction with the surrounding air and
background, to continue with the main sources of interference in
if they are not allowed to discharge (ESD) during that process,
each case. Possible mitigation techniques are addressed and some
examples are described. In the first example, issues related to a source of interference is created. Subsequent flash-over
instability and resonance produced by central solar inverters on discharges to various parts of the wind turbine can cause
the electric power system are analyzed and their effects mitigated. effects on the lightning protection, overvoltage protection
In the second example, a case is presented that is related to a study systems and sensitive electronic equipment. To mitigate these
of an earthing system that considers a multilayer model of the soil. tribology effects, mechanisms facilitating charge decay in
We conclude making parallels and differences between EMC blades are implemented.
issues and mitigation techniques in both systems. In large PV parks, due to extensive lengths of metal
connections, nearby charged clouds tend to discharge as
Keywords— EMC; EMI; central solar inverter; wind power;
photovoltaic (PV); electric power system; active damping; lightning
lightning strikes hitting PV structures and disturbing electronic
equipment. HF switching frequencies from converters are able
to use these metallic structures as antennas to propagate
conductively or even radiate as HF disturbances [3].
I. INTRODUCTION
Wind power (WP) and solar photovoltaic (PV) are the two III. FIRST EXAMPLE
renewable energy systems with most rapid installed capacity Central solar inverters play an essential role in making PV
growth in the last couple of decades. In this paper only solar energy available to the electric power system (EPS).
electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) issues of large systems When the grid has high impedance (weak grid),
will be studied, meaning WP farms and PV parks that fulfill 3 interconnection of central solar inverters may generate
conditions: (1) operate in the MW range; (2) connected to the problems of instability and resonance which in turn could lead
power grid; and (3) operated by electricity generating to equipment disconnection or low power quality in the grid.
companies. As a consequence of the penetration of these As an example, is presented a case study of a 3.4 MW rated
system into the electric transmission grid two things happen, solar central inverter connected to a 34.5 kV three-phase
on the one hand these systems act as power plants providing medium voltage grid through a step-up transformer, which
raises the voltage from 360 V to 34.5 kV, providing galvanic
stability and power balance to the grid on the other hand are
isolation between the solar plant and the power grid and
susceptible to be affected by external or internal
eliminating common mode and zero sequence currents in
electromagnetic interferences (EMI). the electrical system. Since the transformer has two
Two CIGRE working groups, C4.30 and C4.44, have secondaries, each ones has a 1.7MW solar inverter connected
decided to study these effects on WP and PV systems to it, as shown in Fig. 1.
correspondingly. Extending a previous study on EMC on
power plants and substations [1]. In the present paper sources
of EMI, effects, mitigation schemes and examples for both
systems will be presented. A comparison between both will
also be made.
II. SOURCES OF INTERFERENCE
In WP systems, more than in PV systems, the plants are
located in remote areas therefore immunity issues are more
relevant than emission. The main sources of interference for
WP systems are: lightning (evident from the use of very tall
towers), high frequency (HF) converters [2]. In wind farms Fig. 1. General diagram of the central solar inverter.
interconnects can propagate disturbances along power cables,
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Fig. 6. Test setup and power meter connection.
Fig. 8. Voltage and current waveforms of the inverter during operation
with active damping control.
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The spacing between the electrodes is increased in steps. The specialized software; meanwhile a simple earthing system
measurement of soil resistivity [13] is shown in Fig. 9 (below). model represented by a 10ȍ resistor is used for benchmarking.
The soil resistivity is not constant with the increase of electrode The comparison reveals that the synthesized grounding model
spacing, which implies that the soil structure has at least two gives higher peak voltage than the ten ohm DC resistor model,
layers. but on the other hand it decays faster. The wide frequency
Based on the soil resistivity data the soil structure is range of the synthesized circuit is believed to have better
determined. First, a model for two layers is built then this representation of the actual physical earthing system.
process is generalized to a multilayer model.
The parameters for these models are obtained by a genetic
algorithm (GA) optimization process [14], [15] which mimics
a biological reproduction process and uses the minimization of
a function that takes into account the measured data. The model
for a horizontally stratified two-layer and multi-layer earth
structure is shown in Fig. 10.
The obtained parameters by the GA procedure are used to
compute the soil resistivity by two methods theoretically [14]
and by FEM numerical modeling (COMSOL Multiphysics).
Then by contrasting these results with the measured soil
resistivity the parameters resulting from GA Fig. 11 are
validated.
With the parameters optimized by GA for the three-layer
earth model (Fig.10) the surface potential of the earthing
system is calculated in FEM domain.
Analyzing the potential on the soil surface radially from the
earthing system the rod system exhibits a lower surface
potential than the for the gravity foundation system; however
the gradient of the curves imply that the step voltage of the
monopole system is larger than the gravity foundation
earthing.
Using the three-layer earth model given in Fig. 10 the Fig. 10. Two layer (above) and three-layer (below) models and their respective
frequency response is computed from DC up to 100MHz for results are presented.
the real-life geometry of the mono pile earthing system and the
gravity foundation earthing system by the means of FEM.
After this, an approximation of the frequency response by
using Vector Fitting (VF) is achieved [16], which enables the
establishment of a transfer function from the frequency
response. Finally a lumped circuit is found by circuit synthesis
[17] to represent the same frequency response of the earthing
system.
The advantage of using the equivalent circuit is the
possibility to model the transient of the earthing system
efficiently with limited simulation time. Besides this it is also
easy to implement other electrical components together with
the earthing system, for example transmission line,
transformer, circuit breaker.
The purpose of conducting transient analysis of a wind farm is
to foresee harmful over voltages or surge currents within the
system during lightning exposure, and therefore enable the
Fig 11. Synthesized circuit for the rod earthing system (above) and for the
designers to take their precautions. For the purpose of concrete foundation earthing system (below).
visualizing the overall concept a case study where 7 turbines
connected in a small wind farm is considered. For the design V. CONCLUSION
chosen, different types of earthing systems (foundations) are EMC issues in large WP and PV systems have various
investigated to show the differences in over voltages and surge similarities as they are prone to lightning and HF EMI from
currents for the different earthing impedances. The synthesized converters. Yet, since they operate in rather different
circuits presented in the previous section are used to simulate environment the details of these interference interactions differ
the lightning transient voltages of the wind farm in transient much in the details. Besides there are EMI sources distinctive
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to each one, for example due to the dynamic nature of the Standards Coordinating Committee 21 on Fuel Cells,
turbine blades these are able to accumulate charges which Photovoltaics, Dispersed Generation, and Energy Storage,
represent a problem requiring special mitigation techniques. EUA, 2000.
[11] Jiawei Liu and Søren Find Madsen, “Transient analysis of
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