Optimal design of SSSC and crowbar parameters for performance enhancement of Egyptian Zafrana wind farm

Zafarana Wind Park is considered the largest wind farm in Middle East. By the year 2022, Zafarana wind farm will inject 545 MW to Egypt national electric network (ENEN). This wind farm has been connecting to ENEN in stages (eight stages) from ten years ago. Each stage represents a project of wind farm. Hence, the impact of the emergency condition of ENEN on the performance of the installed stage of Zafarana Wind Park should be studied. Moreover, determining the possible method to reduce the side effects of the emergency condition of ENEN on the installed stage of Zafarana Wind Park becomes an important issue. In this paper, a combination between Static Synchronous Series Compensator (SSSC) and crowbar (Cro-SSSC) is used to enhance the performance of the one installed stage of Zafarana Wind Park. The studied stage of Zafarana Wind Park is Zafarana Z1 wind farm (Z1). Zafarana Z1 wind farm represents that first stage of Zafarana Wind Park that was connected to ENEN. Hence, the paper takes Zafarana Z1 wind farm as the studied case to examine the impact of Cro-SSSC. The crowbar is used to protect the power components of the SSSC from the high current during grid fault condition. Also, in this paper multi-objective lightning attachment procedure optimization algorithm (LAPO) and the sine cosine algorithm (SCA) are used to evaluate and tune the control gains of SSSC and the value of crowbar's resistance. This step is important in order to determine the values of the control's gains of SSSC and the value of crowbar resistance which suit the studied system (one installed stage of Zafarana Wind Park). The sliding mode control (SMC) is used as an example of nonlinear control of SSSC. Also, a hybrid of LAPO and SMC is used to improve the performance of Zafarana Z1 during faults. The results of LAPO, SCA and SMC are compared during three-phase fault and single line to ground fault applied to the studied system.