Wind farm communication system research based on Ethernet

This paper discusses the communication of the wind farm and wind farms with remote power dispatching centre, because so many wind farms plants have been built in the last few years. The power capacity of wind farms becomes more and more important for the power gird. Due to the effect of the weather conditions on the supply it is necessary for the power dispatching centre to monitor the wind farm condition regularly. However, these wind turbines are from different manufacturers, and therefore use incompatible monitoring technologies and communication protocols. So the issues has became how to communicate with wind farm monitoring system and transfer the wind turbine condition information to the remote power dispatching centre safely and reliably. Additionally most wind farms are located in harsh areas, offshore or mountainous area which is different from the centralized power plants of traditional power systems. The IEC 61400-25 series of standards for communication technologies has been designed to address this problem. This enables the power plant to be monitored at the remote power dispatching centre to maintain the power system's stability, reliability, and security. Using international communications standards and protocols such as Ethernet and TCP/IP ensures long term compatibility. This paper is based on the local and regional wind farm system development and the IEC 61400-25 requirements. It uses a wired communication system between the wind turbines, the wind farm monitoring system and the remote power dispatching centre. The whole system is modelled using the OPNET simulator and the results are analysed and presented.