2012 International Conference on Power and Energy Systems

Lecture Notes in Information Technology, Vol.13

Operation and Coordinated Control of Multi-terminal VSC-HVDC

Transmission System for Wind Power Generation
Yuan Fu1,a, Yi Wang1,b, Yingli Luo2,c, and Xiangyu Zhang1,c,*
1

North China Electric Power University, Yonghua North Street 619, Baoding, 071003, China
2

North China Electric Power University, Beijing, 102206, China

fuyuan8000@163.com, byi.wang@ncepubd.edu.cn, czh.xy.sq@163.com

*Xiangyu Zhang

Keywords: High voltage dc transmission (HVDC), Multi-terminal DC (MTDC), Voltage source

converter (VSC), Wind power.

Abstract. The multi-terminal DC (MTDC) is anticipated as a flexible and reliable solution for the
large scale wind power transmission. This paper investigates the use of voltage source converter
(VSC) based MTDC system for outward transmission of the large scale wind power. A MTDC
system for aggregating and dispatching wind power is proposed firstly. And then the coordinated
control strategy for the proposed MTDC system is discussed. Finally, a four-terminal MTDC system
connecting two DFIG-based wind farms, the local and remote grids is simulated for demonstrating
the performance of the MTDC system during wind speed variations and DC line faults. The results
show that the proposed MTDC system and control strategy can reallocate the wind power in the DC
network to achieve a constant power for long distant transmission to the load center.
1. Introduction
HVDC transmission system is a feasible and economical solution for long distance power
transmission. Compared to the classical line commutated converter based HVDC (LCC-HVDC), the
voltage source converter based HVDC (VSC- HVDC) has advantages such as independent control of
active and reactive power, no commutation failures, black-start capability, easy extension to
multi-terminal DC(MTDC) system, etc.
Many types of MTDC system have been proposed with different operation objectives, terminal
numbers and DC network configurations. MTDC systems for transmitting power between
conventional AC networks and connecting wind farms based on induction generators, DFIG, and
synchronous generators were proposed in [1-3]. In [4], a three-terminal VSC-HVDC connecting an
offshore wind farm, an oil and gas platform load and an onshore ac grid was proposed and analyzed.
However, only one grid side VSC was considered in these studies. In [5-6], a simple four-terminal
MTDC system was proposed for integrating two offshore wind farms into two onshore ac grids
situated in various geographical location and the power sharing and DC grid management strategies
were outlined. However, the effects of the wind power fluctuation and intermission on the line
transfer capacity need further investigation.
In this paper, a novel four-terminal DC network, which connects two wind farms to the local grid
and dispatches wind power to the remote load center, is simulated using MATLAB/Simulink to
verify the performance and stability of the proposed MTDC system, and the coordinated control
strategies between the wind farm side VSCs and the grid side VSCs are investigated.
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ICPES2012

2. Model and control of VSC

The VSCs in the proposed MTDC system have the same configuration but different control modes.
The schematic diagram and the vector-based equivalent circuit of a VSC station in the synchronous
dq reference frame is shown in Fig. 1.

(a) Schematic diagram of VSC-HVDC (b) Complex vector equivalent circuit of a VSC station in the synchronous
frame
Fig. 1 Schematic diagram and equivalent circuit of a VSC station

According to Fig. 1(b), the voltage, current, power of the converter can be expressed as

Vc Vs Rc I c js Lc I c Lc
I c I s js Cf Vs Cf

Cdc

dVdc
I dc I L
dt

Ps jQs

3
Vs Is
2

Pdc Ps I c Rc Vdc I dc

dVs
dt

dI c
dt

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)
(5)

dVs
(6)
I s I c js Cf Vs
dt
where Rc represents the total loss of the VSC, Lc is the filter inductor, Cf is the filter capacitor.
The VSC instantaneous power control is typically based on vector control with dual closed loop
structure. For the vector control using grid voltage orientation, the active power and reactive power
are proportional to the d-axis and q-axis currents respectively. During power transmission, at least
one VSC terminal should control the DC link voltage, and the other terminal controls active power
flow so as to achieve automatic active power balance of the DC network [7-8]. Whilst for the wind
farm side VSC station not only collects energy from the wind farm but also needs to control the wind
farm AC network voltage and frequency. Therefore, there can be three different active power control
modes for different VSC operations, i.e. DC voltage control, power flow control, and voltage source
control modes, which are discussed as follows.
Cf

2.1 Mode I: DC voltage control

For the normal operation of a MTDC system, its common DC link voltage must be maintained at a
constant value to balance the transmitted power under all conditions. To achieve this balance, the
VSC connected to the local grid with fast energy storage is assigned to control the dc voltage.
The control system is usually defined in the synchronous d-q reference frame fixed to the grid
voltage. As shown in Fig. 2, the outer DC voltage and AC voltage/reactive power control loops
generate the reference d and q axis current orders respectively for Mode I. For the inner current loop,
the converter current PI regulators and the decoupling voltages are used to follow the relevant current
references. According to (1), the required converter output voltage is
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Vc* V ' kp (I*c I c ) ki (I*c I c )dt

(7)

V ' Vs Rc I c js Lc I c

where V ' is the decoupling voltage, kp and ki are the proportional and integral gains of the current
controller.
2.2 Mode II: Power flow control
After aggregating wind power flow and mitigating wind power fluctuations at the swing bus of the
DC network, a constant power flow is dispatched to the remote load center, and the RGVSC is the
receiving end.
For Mode II, the inner current control loop and the outer reactive power control loop are the same
with Mode I, but the d-axis current reference is given by the power flow control in the outer control
loop as shown in Fig. 2. The RGVSC operates at power flow control mode normally, and switches to
DC voltage control only when LGVSC reaches power limitation due to sudden changes of wind
speed or disturbances of the local AC grid.
2.3 Mode III: Voltage source control
The wind farm side VSC stations operate as a voltage source with constant AC voltage amplitude and
frequency, and collects energy from the wind farms. The outer control loop to keep wind farm side
voltage constant is shown in Fig. 2. For the outer ac voltage loop, a PI controller and feed forward
decoupling item are adopted and the output of the controller determines the current reference of the
inner control loop. According to (6), the current references for the inner control loop can be given as

I*c kp1 (Vs* Vs ) ki1 (Vs* Vs )dt jscf Vs

(8)

where kp1 and kis are the proportional and integral gains of the AC voltage controller. The frequency
and phase of the converter output voltage Vs are determined solely by the VSC control system, and
the s used for reference frame transformation is provided by integrating a constant frequency rather
than using conventional phase-locked-loops (PLL).

Fig. 2 Schematic control diagram of the VSC

3. Coordinated control of MTDC system

The proposed MTDC system is constructed for aggregating wind farms to mitigate the power
fluctuations, and dispatching wind power between the local grid and the remote load center. The
local grid may have the ability of balancing a certain degree of wind power fluctuations while it has
reserve power supply or fast energy storage. However, the regulation capacity of the local grid only
considers covering the short term wind power fluctuations rather than the total wind generation
capacity. Due to the limitation of the LGVSC capacity, the operation mode of the MTDC system can
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be divided into three cases:

Case I: PLG _ max PWF _ total PRG PLG _ max
Case II: PWF _ total PRG PLG _ max

Case III: PWF _ total PRG PLG _ max

where PWF_total is the total aggregated wind power, PRG is the dispatching power for outward
transmission, and PLG_max is the maximum regulation capacity of the LGVSC. The coordinated
control strategy of the VSC terminals and wind farms is depicted in Fig. 3.

Fig.3 Simplified coordinated control strategy of the MTDC

3.1 Coordinated control under Case I

Under Case I, the VSC station connected to local grid is assigned as the swing bus, and operates at
Mode I to maintain DC voltage constant. Due to the LGVSC can balance the total wind power
fluctuations, the WFVSC operates at Mode III to collect all the generated wind power, while the
RGVSC operates at Mode II to transmit a constant power flow to the load center. The DC link voltage
must be controlled within acceptable limits to ensure the stability of the DC network.
3.2 Coordinated control under Case II
If the wind speed sudden decrease or there is a DC line fault of the wind farm side VSCs, the
aggregated wind power is less than the rated transmitting power to the RGVSC, which causes the DC
voltage droop sharply and may reach the lower limit. Under this condition, the LGVSC supply all the
reserve capacity for the RGVSC, but it is still not enough to balance the power of DC network. And
then the LGVSC switches to current limit control mode. Meanwhile the RGVSC switches the control
mode form Mode II to Mode I to control the DC voltage at a low value. The receiving power flow by
the RGVSC is reduced consequently.
3.3 Coordinated control under Case III
When the value difference between the infeed wind power and the transmission power is much larger
than the maximum regulation capacity of the LGVSC, the DC voltage increases rapidly until reach its
upper limit. Therefore, the LGVSC is no longer able to control the DC voltage under this condition,
and it will go into current limit mode. Consequently, the WFVSC switches operation mode from
Mode III to Mode I to control the DC voltage, and the wind turbines must reduce the output power
immediately to balance the power flow of the DC network. An extra droop controller dependent DC
voltage will provided a de-loading order of P, which is sent to the wind farm controller. The
principle of the coordination control of the varying converter terminals is to maintain the system
stability and to transmit a constant power to the remote load center under large disturbance. Therefore,
there are two operation modes of the RGVSC acoording to different disturbances. If the wind farms
generate maximum power simultaneously, the RGVSC still maintants the power at the rated. On the
other hand, when a short circuit fault occurs at the power transmission line, the RGVSC should be
temporary blocked during the AC fault and fast recovers to the constant power flow control mode. As
shown in Fig.3, the MTDC system by using the coordinated control can be immune from influence of
wind power fluctuations or AC fault, and transmit a constant wind power to the remote load center. In
addition, the MTDC system can switch operation modes in different cases by detection DC voltage
with no need of communication.

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4. Simulation studies
Simulation studies of the proposed MTDC system for integrating two DFIG based wind farms with
the local and remote grids have been performed using MATLAB/Simulink. The system configuration
and parameters are shown in Fig.4. Two DFIG-based wind farms and the WFVSCs are both rated at
500MW. The wind power is collected by WFVSCs, then aggregated by LGVSC, and finally
transmitted to a remote grid located 200km away. The main task of the local grid is to mitigate the
wind power fluctuations and control DC link voltage. The upper limit and lower limit of the DC
voltage are set as 1.02 and 0.98 respectively. The local grid has the ability of fast balancing the power
fluctuations within 100MW. The rated transmission capacity of the line 3 to remote grid is 400MW.

Fig.4 Single line diagram of a four-terminal MTDC network

The MTDC system control and operation with wind speed variations were simulated firstly, and the
results are shown in Fig.5. The wind speeds are 8m/s and 10m/s for wind farm 1 and wind farm 2
respectively with generated power being around 0.25 p.u (125MW) from WF1 and 0.52 p.u.(260MW)
from WF2. As the LGVSC can balance 100MW fluctuatios, the DC voltage is controlled at the set
value of 1p.u as shown in Fig.5(a). When the wind speed of WF1 step increase to 10m/s at 2s, the
WF1 generated power is changed from 0.25p.u to 0.52p.u accordingly. While the WF2 keeps 0.52p.u
at all time. Thus the wind power aggregated to the local grid is changed from 0.77p.u (385MW) to
1.04p.u (520MW) at 2s, while the transmitted power to the remote grid always keeps at 400MW. Due
to the LGVSC cannot absorb the more power fluctuation of the DC ntetwork, the DC voltage
increases fast until the WFVSCs switch operation mode to Mode I. The WF1 has to be de-loading
operation instead of MTTP control mode to achieve the power balance of the DC network.

Fig.5 Performances of the MTDC system

Conversely, the wind speeds of WF1 and WF2 are 10m/s and 8m/s initially. As can be seen in Fig.
5 (b), When the wind speed of WF1 drops to 8 m/s at 2s, the total wind power changes from 0.77p.u
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(385MW) to 0.5p.u (250MW). Accordingly, the LGVSC cannot control DC voltage as well. Under
this case the RGVSC has to operate at DC voltage control mode as Fig. 3(a), and reduce the
transmitted power to the remote grid for maintaning the power balance of the DC network.
Further tests on the operation and performance of the system during large disturbance caused by
the trip of WF1. Fig.5 (c) shows the MTDC system performance under the condition of WF1 trips.
Because of the sudden loss of 125MW infeed power, the DC link voltage drops sharply. Although the
LGVSC provides the 100MW reserve capacity to the MTDC system, the transmitted power cannot
reach the rated power of 400MW. The LGVSC goes into current limit control mode and no longer
controls the DC link Voltage. When the DC link voltage drops to 0.97p.u, the RGVSC swtichs to DC
voltage control mode as Fig. 3(a). Finaly, the RGVSC receiving power is reduced to 0.7p.u,
meanwhile the DC voltage is maintained at 0.98p.u.
5. Conclusion
This paper investigates the potential of the MTDC system for large scale wind power transmission.
Compared to the AC network for wind farms interconnection, the MTDC system is more flexible and
reliable due to the fast control ability of the VSC. Three control modes of the VSC for different
connected terminals, i.e. DC voltage control, power flow control and voltage source control are
discussed. The control characteristics of VSC station and a novel coordinated control strategy that
operates the VSCs smoothly under the three conditions are depicted. And the simulation results with
wind speed variations and transmission line faults show that the advantages of the MTDC system for
dispatching wind power as the requirements of the power system operator and solving the bulk wind
power within a long distance transmission bottleneck.
6. AcknowledgementS
This research was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.
50977028 and No. 50807015) and by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.
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