Var Planning Assessment in a meshed AC/DC System: The future Irish Transmission System

The importance of wind power generation has risen in the last years so much as to be considered among the most important and affordable Renewable Energy Sources (RES) with a growing rate faster than other technologies. Nowadays, wind technology is looking at offshore installations, due to the both lack of land resources and environmentalist opposition. This requires new criteria to set out the appropriate architecture for future offshore grids, in terms of topology, technology and control structures. This paper describes a var planning methodology aiming at identifying reactive needs for future mixed meshed AC/DC system.