Despite global warming, renewable energy has gained much interest worldwide due to its ability to generate large-scale energy without emitting greenhouse gases. The availability and low cost of wind energy and its high efficiency and technological advancements make it one of the most promising renewable energy sources. Hence, capturing large amounts of wind energy is essential today. The large-scale integration of wind power sources must be evaluated and mitigated to develop a sustainable future power system. Wind energy research and the government are working together to overcome the potential barriers associated with its penetration into the power grid. This paper reviews the social, environmental, and cost-economic impacts of installing large-scale wind energy plants. A valuable review of wind energy technology and its challenges is also presented in this paper, including the effects of wind farms on nearby communities, generation uncertainty, power quality issues, angular and voltage stability, reactive power support, and fault ride-through capability. Besides, socioeconomic, environmental, and electricity market challenges due to the grid integration of wind power are also investigated. Finally, potential technical challenges to integrating large-scale wind energy into the power grid are reviewed regarding current research and their available mitigation techniques.
Keywords: Grid integration; Large-scale capacity; Reactive power support; Renewable energy; Wind power.
© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.