POWER SYSTEMS
A. Panosyan, B. R. Oswald
Institute of Electric Power Systems, University of Hannover, Germany
ABSTRACT
The significant increase in planned offshore wind parks and the tendency towards large parks in considerable distances
offshore, make the well established HVDC technology a favorable solution for the connection of these large & distant
offshore wind parks to the main power grid onshore. It is therefore necessary to adequately model the HVDC transmis-
sion links and integrate them in the load flow analysis of the complete a.c.-d.c. system. In this paper, the well known
Newton-Raphson method for the load flow analysis is modified to achieve compatibility for a.c.-d.c. systems with inte-
grated d.c. links in the a.c. network. The elements of the residual vector and the Jacobian matrix for the a.c. network are
kept unchanged and are merely complemented by a new vector and a new matrix, which represent the modifications due
to the d.c. link. The modified Jacobian equation includes the d.c. real and reactive power at the a.c.-d.c. buses, and their
dependency on the a.c. system variables. The modified Newton-Raphson method is evaluated on an a.c.-d.c. test system
with a load flow computation in MATLAB and the results are presented
1 INTRODUCTION
These large wind farms connected to the main grid
The significant increase in planned offshore wind parks through two-terminal HVDC links represent a chal-
and the tendency towards large parks in considerable lenge for the simulation of analysis of the overall a.c.-
distances offshore poses a new challenge to grid opera- d.c. power system. Therefore, these new network ele-
tors. Although, present pilot farms with limited capac- ments should be appropriately modeled and repre-
ity can be connected to the main grid onshore relatively sented in the different simulation programs. In this
easily and inexpensively using conventional a.c. trans- paper, the adequate modeling of a two-terminal HVDC
mission, connecting larger wind farms further offshore link and its integration into the well known Newton-
is considerably more difficult. The main disadvantage Raphson method for the load flow analysis is looked
of an a.c. connection to these remote offshore parks is into, taking into account the control strategies of the
the great amount of charging current produced by long HVDC converter stations.
a.c. submarine cables due to the high capacitance of
a.c. cables, which reduces the active current-carrying
capacity of the cable and requires reactive power com- 2 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
pensation. Thus, the greater the distance of these large
The simplest way of integrating a d.c. link into the a.c.
wind farms to the grid onshore become and the higher
load flow is representing it by constant active and reac-
the transmission voltage is, the more convenient tech-
tive power injections at the two terminal buses in the
nical and economical solution High Voltage Direct
a.c. systems. Thus the two terminal a.c.-d.c buses are
Current (HVDC) transmission becomes for connecting
represented as a PQ-bus with a constant voltage inde-
distant large offshore wind parks to the main grid.
pendent active and reactive power. However this is
clearly an inadequate representation where the links
Although the new Voltage-Sourced-Converter (VSC)
contribution to a.c. system reactive power and voltage
based HVDC technology allows higher flexibility over
conditions is significant, since the accurate operating
the conventional Current-Source-Converter (CVC)
modes of the link and its terminal equipment are ig-
based HVDC and an independent reactive power con-
nored.
trol in addition to other advantages, the VSC transmis-
sion technology is still in its early stages and is still
A more advanced and accurate method is representing
economically not feasible at power levels of 500MW
buses connected to an HVDC as a PQ-bus with a volt-
or more due to the high cost of multiple converters and
age dependant active and reactive power. However, the
cables that are required. The conventional HVDC will
voltage dependency of the active and reactive power at
therefore be the more logical choice at the present for
these a.c.-d.c. buses do not obey the general rules of
the connection of the planned offshore wind farms to
the conventional PQ-buses in a.c. systems. We have
the main grid.
thus a new type of PQ-bus, which we define as PQDC-
bus. In our approach the real and reactive power equa- 3 MODELLING THE D.C. LINK
tions for the PQDC-buses, with their dependency on
both the a.c. voltages at the terminal buses and the For the analysis of the steady state converter operation,
characteristics of the d.c. converters and their control some basic and generally valid assumptions can be
strategies, are derived and integrated into the a.c. load made. Firstly, the a.c. voltages at the terminal buses are
flow algorithm. perfectly balanced and sinusoidal. Thus, a perfect a.c.
filtering of all harmonic currents and voltages gener-
This approach is a combination of the two main meth- ated by the converters is assumed. Correspondingly, a
ods most a.c.-d.c. load flow algorithms are based on: perfect filtering on the d.c. side too is assumed and the
the simultaneous solution method and the sequential d.c. current and voltage contain no a.c. components.
solution method. Unlike the sequential method, in Furthermore, the losses and magnetizing admittance of
which successive iterations between the a.c. load flow the two-winding converter transformers are ignored.
and d.c. the load flow are taken, the a.c. and d.c. equa-
tions are all solved in the same iteration step. Neverthe- A basic schematic diagram of a two-terminal HVDC
less the d.c. variables are not explicitly included in the link interconnecting buses "r" (rectifier) and "i" (In-
state vector as in the simultaneous solution method. In verter) is illustrated in Figure 1. The symbols appearing
the Newton-Raphson method for the load flow analy- in the diagram are defined as follows:
sis, with the basic Jacobian equation U = primary line-to-line a.c. voltage (r.m.s.)
U d = direct voltage
J ∆x = y (0)
I d = direct current
this leads to modifications on the elements of the resid- n = transformer ratio
ual vector ( y ) and of the Jacobian matrix ( J ) affili- P, Q = active and reactive power
ated to the a.c.-d.c. buses, without adding new elements
to the residual vector and the Jacobian matrix. In this The basic converter equations, for both rectifier and
approach, the real and reactive power and the a.c. volt- inverter operations, describing the relationship between
ages at the converter buses are considered the interface the a.c. and d.c. variables can be written as follows [1].
between the a.c. and d.c. equations in each iteration
step. Rectifier equations
Id Rl
Ur nr ni Ui
Ir Ii
Pr + jQr U dr U di Pi + jQi
Figure 1 Two terminal HVDC link interconnecting buses "r" and "i"
can be determined as nominal d.c. voltage at one of the converters (usually
the inverter), and the optimum value of the control
Qr = Pr tan ϕ r (5) angles, which are usually the minimum control angles
α min and γ min , since the ignition delay angle and
where ϕ r is the phase angle between the a.c. voltage extinction advance angle are kept as close to their
and the fundamental a.c. current, and by neglecting the minimum value as possible to keep the reactive power
commutation overlap can be calculated as. consumption of the converters at its minimum[2].
ϕ r = arccos(U dr U d0r ) (6) With the given converter parameter and control speci-
fications and with the latest updated a.c. bus voltages at
each iteration step, the transformer ratios nr and ni
Inverter equations
The inverter operation of a converter can be corre- corresponding the optimum value of the control angles
spondingly described by the following equations are calculated [3]. However, critical operation condi-
tions may result in one or both converter transformer
U d0i = k niU i (7) ratios reaching their upper or lower limits. When one
of the transformers reaches a limiting ratio, the inverter
U di = U d0i cos γ i − Ri I di (8) d.c. voltage (and subsequently the rectifier d.c. volt-
Pi = U di I di (9) age) is freed and readjusted, keeping the direct current
Qi = Pi tan ϕi (10) fixed. And when both transformer ratios reach their
upper and lower limits respectively, α or γ is freed,
ϕ i = arccos(U di U d0i ) (11)
depending on whether the rectifier transformer ratio or
the inverter transformer ratio has reached its maximum
where γ i is the extinction advance angle. level, since α and γ can not fall below their mini-
mum value. These five operating states of the convert-
Line equation ers are summarized in Table 1. In case the ignition and
The interdependence of the two d.c. voltages can be extinction angles are to be kept fixed at their minimum
expressed by values, the direct current can be freed instead. [2]
U dr = U di + Rl I d (12) Once the operating state of the converters and the cor-
responding transformer ratios are determined, the trans-
with the d.c. line resistance Rl . former ratios need to be readjusted to match one of the
actual tap position of the transformers, since the tap
ratios can vary only in steps. This is done by rounding
Based on eqs. (3),(8) and (12), the equivalent circuit of the calculated ratio to the next highest tap position,
the two terminal HVDC link is shown in Figure 2. ensuring that the control angles, which are correspond-
ingly readjusted too, remain over their minimum val-
ues.
Rr Id Rl − Ri
The active and reactive d.c. power at each converter,
corresponding to the operating state obtained above,
U d0r cos α r can now be obtained through d.c. power equations of
U dr U di U d0i cos γ i
the rectifier and inverter. Thus, the residual vector y
in eq. 1 is modified as follows
Figure 2 HVDC equivalent circuit
y = yac + ydc (13)