Today’s LiveWire Spotlight looks at a joint NERC/Texas RE report describing a March 22 event in the Texas Panhandle, where 2 external faults tripped local wind resources, but not their fossil-fueled counterparts. The investigators attributed the causes to wind turbine high subsynchronous resonance levels, inadequate dynamic performance control strategies during a fault, and poorly coordinated voltage/frequency post-fault recovery systems.
Rapid renewable growth is driving NERC’s urgency to resolve common mode failures like those described in the joint report. But emerging issues are outpacing the ERO’s ability to mitigate them – which may force a scope expansion in the projects dealing with the matter.