Journal of Advanced Engineering Research ISSN: 2393-8447 Volume 1, Issue 1, 2014, pp.77-85 Research Article 77 www.jaeronline.com Power Quality Enhancement of Grid Connected Wind Energy System Using Static Synchronous Compensator Pramod Raikar, S.S. Desai, Shekhappa.G. Ankaliki* Department of Electrical & Electronics Engg, SDM College of Engineering & Technology, Dharwad-580 002, India *Corresponding author email: sgasdmee@rediffmail.com ABSTRACT Due to increased power demand and environmental concern, wind power generation is rapidly growing and wind plants are being integrated to power networks worldwide in large numbers. Injection of wind power into a utility grid results in violation of power quality due to the fluctuating nature of the wind. According to IEC standard, determination of power quality is from the performance of wind generators. In this work power quality issues such as voltage variations, flickers, harmonics are demonstrated due to installation of wind turbine with the grid. FACTS devices can be used to overcome these power quality problems. This paper proposes the STATCOM control scheme for grid connected wind energy system for power quality enhancement. The simulation has been done in MATLAB/Simulink block set. It is shown that STATCOM enhances the power quality of power grid consisting induction generator based wind plant.. Keywords - FACTS devices, Power quality issues, STATCOM, Wind turbine 1. INTRODUCTION To have supportable growth and social progress, it is necessary to meet the energy demand by using the renewable energy resources like solar, wind, biomass, hydro, co-generation, etc. in sustainable energy system, energy preservation and the use of renewable source are the vital paradigm. The need to incorporate the renewable energy like wind energy into power system is to make it possible to reduce the environmental impact on conventional power plant. The incorporation of wind energy into existing power system presents a technical challenges and that requires consideration of stability problem, voltage regulation and power quality problems. The power quality is an important consumer focused measure and is significantly affected by the operation of a transmission and distribution network. The issue of power quality is of great significance to the wind turbine [1]. There has been an extensive growth and rapid development in the utilization of wind energy in recent era. The individual generating units can be of large capacity up to 8 MW, feeding into distribution network, mainly with customers connected in close proximity. The main objectives of the paper are to develop a model for STATCOM for the enhancement of power quality in grid connected wind energy generating system. The following objectives are listed for this work. • Unity Power factor at the grid side (source side). • Reactive power supply only from STATCOM to wind Generator and nonlinear load. • Hysteresis current controller for STATCOM to realize fast dynamic response. 2. SYSTEM CONSIDERED FOR STUDY In this configuration wind generations are based on constant speed topologies with pitch control. The induction generator is used in the proposed scheme because of its easiness, it does not require a separate field circuit for excitation, it can accept constant and variable loads, and it has natural protection against short circuit. In the fixed-speed wind turbine system operation, all the fluctuation in the wind speed is conveyed as fluctuations in the mechanical torque and electrical power on the grid which leads to large voltage variations. During the normal operation, wind turbine produces continuous output power variations. These power variations are mainly caused by the effect of wind shear, turbulence, and tower-shadow and of control system in the power system. Thus, the network needs to withstand for such fluctuations. The power quality issues can be seen with respect to the generation of wind power, transmission and distribution network, such as harmonics, voltage sag, swells, flickers, etc. However the wind generator presents disturbances into the distribution network. One of the simple methods of operating a wind generating system is to use the