Schweitzer paper tops category at expo

Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, Inc. Pullman, announced the company was honored to receive the 2013 Paper of the Year Award in the wind power category at the Renewable Energy World Conference and Expo North America in Orlando, Fla.

The paper was written by SEL employees Michael Thompson, engineering services principal engineer; Tony Martini, engineering services automation engineer, and Nicholas Seeley, research and development lead power engineer.

This paper introduces a centralized and integrated control system for wind farms. Power generated from wind farms is not constant, so they require reactive power support to ensure the grid remains stable. An integrated control solution, discussed in the paper, helps address the challenges of generation systems that are dependent on whether or not the wind is blowing. The system aids in controlling its integration into the overall power grid and is a practical and useful solution for securing the stability of interconnected wind farms across the country.

“When my co-authors and I were given the opportunity to develop algorithms that could stabilize wind farms, we jumped at it. We needed to figure out how to simultaneously optimize power factor and voltage using capacitor and reactor banks. Once we did that and wrote the paper, we were confident that people would see this as a useful reference,” Thompson said.

To read the award-winning technical paper, visit http://www.selinc.com/p179.