Wind power plant grounding, overvoltage protection, and insulation coordination: IEEE PES wind plant collector system design working group

Abstract

Proper insulation coordination is critical to achieving expected life from wind plant equipment. The collector systems of large wind plants require the application of surge arresters to protect the equipment insulation from transient overvoltages. The application of surge arresters is constrained by maximum operating and temporary overvoltage levels. This paper provides a tutorial description of the process of selecting and applying surge arresters to wind plant medium voltage collector systems, with emphasis on the peculiar properties of this application.