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The paper describes special aspects of using the wind power plants (wind turbines) in the power grid. The paper provides the classification and schematic presentation of AC wind turbines, analyzes the role, place and performance of wind power plants in Smart Grid systems with a large share of renewable energy sources. The authors also reviews a detailed analysis of existing AC wind turbines in this paper. Recommendations are given for how to enhance the wind power plants in smart grids in terms of reliability, and introduce the hardware used in the generation, conversion and interface systems into the existing power grid. After the wind power plants had been put online, the relevance of the Smart Grid concept for existing power grids was obvious. The execution of such projects is assumed to be financially costly, requires careful study, and development of flexible algorithms, but in some cases this may be the only approach. The analysis of using wind turbines shows that the structural configuration of wind power plants can be based on the principles known in the power engineering. The approaches may differ, not fundamentally, but in engineering considerations. it is necessary to point out that the method of controlling dual-power machines is quite comprehensive so that their wide use will face operational problems caused by the lack of highly professional specialists in electric drives. Therefore, it seems advisable to use square-cage asynchronous generators in wide applications. The paper shows that as the renewable energy sources are largely used in power grids, there is an issue of maintaining the power generation at a required level considering the variability of incoming wind energy. This results in the malfunctions in the operation of relay protection devices and emergency control automatics (RP and ECA), and the complicated control. Also, the standards of the CIS countries and regulatory documents miss the requirements for the wind turbine protections, taking into account their specialty causing the inefficient standard protective logic, which does not work correctly in a number of abnormal and emergency operating modes, and especially Smart Grid in power grids.