A brushless doubly fed machine is equipped with two decoupled windings on its stator, known as the power
winding and the control winding. The power winding reactive power can be controlled by voltage amplitude fed by
the machine-side converter to the control winding, affecting both the converter size and machine efficiency. This paper
investigates different proposed scenarios for optimal reactive power flow targeted to minimize the converter cost and
maximize the machine efficiency. Previously, the grid-side converter has not been used for reactive power compensation.
However, in the present paper it is shown how the grid-side converter can be effectively used to reduce the converter cost
by controlling the flow of reactive power. The optimal power winding reactive powers for minimizing the converter cost
and for maximizing the output power are not the same. Then the priority of minimizing converter cost over maximizing
machine output power has been justified.