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HVDC Light® - A Preferable Power
Transmission System for Renewable Energies
André Bodin
Abstract – Today’s growing energy market and demand for
renewable energies has generated an increasing request for
advanced transmission technologies. The transmission systems
must be able to handle demanding conditions, such as long
distance water crossing, but still have low power losses. During
the last decade the HVDC Light® has proven to be a preferable
solution for such applications, in particular for offshore wind
power. The main benefit of HVDC is that it uses dc transmission,
instead of ac, which allows for asynchronous interconnections
and suppresses the need for reactive power compensation. HVDC
Light®, based on the voltage sourced converter (VSC)
technology, has great performance when it comes to both active
and reactive power control and it is a low loss transmission
system ready to connect the energies of tomorrow.
Index Terms-- HVDC Light®, HVDC power transmission,
Offshore wind power, Remote renewable energies.
I. INTRODUCTION
D URING the last decades there has been a substantial
growth of the world energy market. This has, together
with the increasing demand for environmental friendly energy
sources, forced the power suppliers to find new ways to
produce electricity for the ac grids. As a consequence there
has been an ever increasing request for research and
development of renewable energies and simultaneously the
rate of renewable energy installations has increased
dramatically. The efficiency of these kinds of sources is
generally highly dependent on where they are placed. It is, for
example, easy to understand that a wind farm must be placed
at a windy location in order to be an efficient source of energy.
Nowadays huge wind farms are built far out in the sea, which
is beneficial from a power generating point of view but not
that lucrative when it comes to connection the power source to
the ac grid.
Since the most advantageous renewable energy locations
tend to be far from where the energy is consumed, it is crucial
to compliment the remote energy sources with reliable low-
loss power transmissions. Long distances and extreme
transmission conditions, such as submarine demands, implies
that only the most advanced transmission systems, for
André Bodin is with ABB AB, HVDC, 77180 Ludvika, Sweden (e-mail:
andre.bodin@se.abb.com)
example HVDC Light®, are suitable for connection of
renewable energies.
II. HVDC LIGHT® TECHNOLOGY
A. HVDC
HVDC, High Voltage Direct Current, is the modern way of
transmitting power from point A to B and is especially
suitable for long distances. Conventional ac transmission
systems generate high losses and need reactive power
compensation. This makes them very inefficient and
unpractical for more demanding power connections. Unlike
the ac transmissions HVDC uses dc current, which implies an
advantage when it comes to transmission properties. In a dc
transmission there is no reactive power, only active, and
therefore no reactive power compensation is needed. The
reasons for choosing HVDC instead of HVAC are many and
some of the obvious arguments are:
-
-
Lower losses
Asynchronous interconnection
- Controllability
- Lower environmental impact
- Long distance water crossing
The HVDC Light® transmission system uses VSC, Voltage
Sourced Converter, technology with self-commutating IGBT,
Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor, converter valves. A
converter valve works as a switch and can, with proper
switching, convert ac to dc or vice versa. Using two converter
valve stations with a dc connection in between, the HVDC
transmission can control the power flow in between, as one
station works as a rectifier and the other as an inverter, see
Fig. 1.
Cable / OH lines
DC DC
P
AC AC
Converter valves
Fig. 1. Principle sketch of an HVDC transmission system.
As shown in Fig. 1 the HVDC transmission system works
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as an asynchronous power connection between the ac

networks. This means that it even can connect a 50 Hz ac
network to a 60 Hz network without problems.
B. HVDC Light®
Apart from conventional LCC, Line Commutated
Converter, HVDC, the HVDC Light® offers great flexibility
and controllability when it comes to ac side reactive power
compensation. The LCC technology uses thyristor valves
whereas VSC technology, as mentioned, uses IGBT valves.
The most important difference between these two
semiconductor solutions is that the IGBT can turn off a current
at any instant. This property is important when it comes to
controllability and it allows the VSC to offer excellent
performance when it comes to ac side voltage, phase angle and
frequency as well as accurate power control. The power
control abilities not only enable HVDC Light® to control the
power flow in the transmission. It also allows the converter to Fig. 2. Map of the German North Sea. The figure shows a principle sketch of
HVDC Light® connecting the offshore wind farm to the shore.
either generate or consume reactive power, to the ac side, and
thus work as an SVC, Static VAr Compensator, as it supports
BorWin1 is an HVDC Light® transmission using ±150 kV on
the ac network.
the dc side, with a rated power of a 400 MW. The offshore
Classic LCC HVDC systems use heavy and expensive
station is built on a platform called BorWin Alpha, see Fig. 3.
impregnated cables, whereas HVDC Light® can use polymer
ABB has built platform based HVDC Light® stations before,
cables. Polymer cables are not compatible with technologies,
for offshore gas and oil applications, but never for wind power
such as LCC, that invert the polarity when changing the power
applications.
direction. Whereas LCC technology changes the polarity, for
power reversal, the VSC technology changes the current
direction and is thus compatible with the polymeric cables.
Another preferable HVDC Light® feature is the so called
black start capability. This means that a converter, fed from
the dc side, actually can start up a black ac grid. This is, for
example, a benefit for offshore wind power and remote power
supply applications. The black start capability facilitates a start
up of an offshore ac network, connecting the wind turbine
generators, with voltage and frequency controlled by the
HVDC Light® station.

III. REMOTE RENEWABLE ENERGIES

All the advantageous properties of the HVDC Light®
transmission system makes it very suitable for connection of
remote renewable energies. Nowadays, offshore wind power is
one of the areas where a lot of research and development is
undertaken and simultaneously there has been a vast increase
in the request for this technique. HVDC Light® technology is
the preferable way of transferring power from offshore wind
farms to the shore and, thus, there has also been a growing
demand for these transmission systems.
A. Offshore Wind Power
ABB has recently installed the world’s first HVDC
transmission for offshore wind power applications. The
project is called BorWin1 and it connects an offshore wind Fig. 3. BorWin Alpha, HVDC Light® offshore platform.
park, lying 130 km out in the North Sea, to the German grid, To build an HVDC station on an offshore platform is a
75 km inland, see Fig. 2. demanding task and requires a lot of advanced engineering.

Due to the limited amount of space, it is important to keep the
design as compact as possible. However, at the same time
there cannot be any compromise when it comes to
performance. Due to the high voltages the distances to walls,
floor and ceiling must be carefully calculated in order to
prevent flashovers inside the station. As shown in Fig. 4 the
station consists of a three phase ac side with transformers and
reactors. It also has a dc side, connecting the station to the
shore via submarine cables. The HVDC Light® valves are
placed in between the ac and dc side and works as rectifiers as
they convert the ac to dc.
Fig. 4. Offshore platform containing an HVDC Light® converter station.
The next, upcoming, HVDC Light® offshore project is
DolWin1. This ±320 kV transmission is also located in the
Nordic Sea and the link is rated for 800 MW active power.
DolWin1 is, as BorWin1, a transmission using the VSC
technology and it will transmit power from the offshore
platform, DolWin Alpha, to the German ac grid. However,
there is one major technical difference between the two
transmissions. BorWin1 is based on the two-level converter
technology, switching between full positive and negative dc
voltage, whereas DolWin1 is based on the new CTL,
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Cascaded Two-Level, converter technology.
IV. EVOLUTION OF HVDC LIGHT®
The HVDC Light® technology has, during the last years,
seen a rapid development when it comes to the converter valve
design. Earlier the valves were constructed using the two-level
converter principle, always switching the full dc voltage. In
order to lower the converter power losses different kinds of
optimization work has been performed, e.g. optimizing the
PWM, Pulse Width Modulation, pattern. However, to achieve
a more substantial decrease of the power losses a change in the
valve design was necessary.
A. Two-Level Converter
The two-level converter valve technology, used in
BorWin1, is simply based on series connected IGBTs and
diodes. The semiconductors are connected in between the ac
phase and the dc pole, allowing the IGBTs to connect the ac
side to either positive or negative dc voltage, see Fig. 5.
Fig. 5. Single line diagram of a two-level HVDC Light® converter.
In one single valve, i.e. between ac and positive dc, all the
series connected IGBTs share the voltage and always need to
switch simultaneously. This implies that a rather high
switching frequency is needed in order to create an acceptable
PWM pattern on the ac side, see Fig. 6.
Fig. 6. One period of the converter voltage using two-level technology.
B. Cascaded Two-Level Converter
The development of the HVDC Light® technology has
recently led to an evolution from the two-level converter to the
CTL converter, see Fig. 7. This technology is, as the name
indicates, based on the two-level design, but is rather complex
in comparison. In order to lower the IGBT switching
frequency, and thus lower the valve losses, the converter is
built of multiple series connected converter cells. The cells
consist of IGBTs and capacitors and work, individually,
according to the two-level converter principle.
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VI. REFERENCES
[1] B. Jacobson, P. Karlsson, G. Asplund, L. Harnefors and T Jonsson,
"VSC-HVDC Transmission with Cascaded Two-Level Converters"
presented at the Cigré Conference, Paris, France, 2010.
[2] O. Vestergaard, B.Westman, G.McKay, P. Jones, J. Fitzgerald and B.
Williams, “HVDC – Enabling the Transition to an Energy System Based
on Renewables” presented at the ACDC Power Transmission
Conference 2010, London, UK, 2010.
[3] M. Gross, “The Transmission Imperative for Renewables”, article
published in Electric Light & Power Jan 2011.
[4] ABB Technical Papers (www.abb.com/hvdc)

VII. BIOGRAPHIES
André Bodin obtained his Master degree in engineering
physics from Umeå University, Sweden in 2010. He
joined ABB Power Systems, HVDC, Ludvika, Sweden
Fig. 7. Single line diagram of a CTL HVDC Light® converter. in February 2010 as IGBT valve design and test
engineer.
The CTL converter design allows for a PWM pattern with
small voltage steps, each corresponding to one capacitor in the
valve. This results in low switching frequency for each
individual IGBT, i.e. low switching losses. It also implies that
the harmonics on the ac side are on a low-level, minimizing
the need for filters, see Fig. 8.

Fig. 8. One period of the converter voltage using CTL technology.

V. SUMMARY
The flexibility, controllability and low power losses of the
HVDC Light® system makes it suitable for the most
demanding power transmission assignments. This makes it
very suitable for connection of remote renewable energies.
However, HVDC Light® is not only useful for transmission
purposes. The VSC converter can control the ac side voltage,
phase angle and frequency and thus works as an SVC as it
supports the ac network. Further more, HVDC Light® offers
black start capability and can, thus, send electrical power to
the area without local power generation.
Today, there is an ever increasing demand for remote
renewable energies, such as offshore wind power, generating a
growing market for advanced transmission systems that can
transmit the power to the consumers. HVDC Light® offers
superior transmission and power control properties, as well as
outstanding ac grid reactive power supporting, and is thus a
preferable solution. HVDC Light® is the state of the art of
electrical power transmission.