RELIABILITY MODELING OF LARGE WIND FARMS AND ASSOCIATED ELECTRIC UTILITY INTERFACE SYSTEMS.

This paper is concerned with modeling the reliability characteristics in both probability and frequency of large electric utility application wind turbine generators together with their associated utility interface equipment. A computationally efficient algorithm is developed and applied to a wind farm with a special ac/dc/ac interface currently under design. The effects of various wind turbine/interface system component forced outage rates on the expected annual energy output of the farm is examined.