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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 25, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2010

Analysis and Design of an Offshore

Wind Farm Using a MV DC Grid
Jonathan Robinson, Dragan Jovcic, Senior Member, IEEE, and Gza Jos, Fellow, IEEE

AbstractThis paper outlines the design of an offshore wind

farm using a dc offshore grid based on resonant dc-dc converters.
Multiphase resonant dc-dc converters are studied to step up the
dc voltage from individual wind generators to a Medium Voltage
(MV) dc bus, and from the MV bus to an HVDC line that will connect the wind farm to shore. Compared to an equivalent ac gridbased wind farm, a dc grid-based wind farm has slightly higher
losses, but the weight of the magnetic components and cables is
substantially lower. The analysis of operating permanent-magnet
synchronous generators at variable and constant dc voltages shows
that a xed dc voltage has marginally higher efciency than a variable dc voltage. However, using a variable dc voltage gives lower
harmonics at the generator facing the voltage-source converter and
the dc-dc step-up converter. An aggregated model of multiple parallel connected wind generators is developed and shown to accurately approximate a detailed PSCAD model during varying wind
conditions and transients.
Index TermsDCDC power conversion, HVDC transmission,
permanent-magnet generator, wind energy.

I. INTRODUCTION

ARGE offshore wind farms located far from their grid

connection point will require HVDC to connect to shore
to reduce cable losses and decrease reactive power requirements
[1]. A typical offshore wind farm using an HVDC interconnector would require individual transformers (usually located
in the tower of the generator) to boost the low voltage output of
a wind generator to medium-voltage (MV) levels, undersea cables to connect to an offshore converter station to collect energy
from the wind farm, a high-voltage (HV) transformer to boost
the voltage, and an HVDC converter. Such offshore technology
has a number of known challenges, including modest efciency,
and high weight and size of the offshore installation, which affects the costs of transportation, installation, and maintenance.
While the voltage-source converter (VSC)-based HVDC has the
potential to eliminate many of the large lters required with conventional HVDC, the large, heavy ac transformers in the wind
generator towers and at the offshore converter station are still
required [1].

Manuscript received February 09, 2010; revised April 21, 2010; accepted
May 29, 2010. Date of current version September 22, 2010. Paper no. TPWRD00100-2010.
J. Robinson and G. Jos are with the Electrical Engineering Department, McGill University, Montral, QC H3A 2A7, Canada (e-mail:
jonathan.robinson@mail.mcgill.ca; geza.joos@mcgill.ca).
D. Jovcic is with the Electrical Engineering Department, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 3U3, U.K. (e-mail: d.jovcic@abdn.ac.uk).
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TPWRD.2010.2053390

The use of dcdc converters enables development of offshore dc collection grids [2], [3], which have a number of
advantages since they potentially eliminate the large ac transformers, increase efciency, and reduce the size and weight
of the cable connections. The benets of dc grids crucially
depend on the high power dc-dc converters. There are no operational high-power dcdc converters but a number of different
topologies are in research worldwide. Reference [2] presents a
detailed study of losses in different wind farm topologies and
using several known dc-dc converter concepts, i.e. full bridge,
single active bridge, and LCC resonant converters. This study
considers a modest sized wind farm (25 MW), and the voltage
level of the HVDC line is low (75 kV). The practical aspects
of the dcdc converters, the control of the wind generators,
and the performance during faults are not discussed in detail.
In [3], different 500 MW wind farm topologies are compared
assuming a dc grid based on single active bridge dcdc converters, showing converter losses and simulation results for
start-up, shut-down, and external grid faults. However, the
feasibility of the presumed high-power dcdc converter may
be questionable because of losses, saturation, and harmonics
in the internal MW-size medium-frequency ac transformer, in
particular during contingencies.
The present study investigates the development of an offshore
dc grid based on a new concept of high-power resonant dcdc
converter proposed in [4]. Section II overviews the requirements
of a dc grid-based offshore wind farm connected to an HVDC
line. Section III details a design procedure to size the wind farm
dc-dc converter components to maximize efciency and reduce
the resonant inductor weight, select converter lter capacitors,
and a method to prevent fault propagation from the HV to the
LV side of the converter.
In Section IV, the benets of using a single-inductor threephase resonant dc-dc converter are investigated. This topology
has a number of benets over the single-phase version in [4], in
terms of components size, weight and the harmonics. A simple
three-phase version is studied in [5], but six inductors are employed which have disadvantages in terms of increased losses
and space.
In Section V, the single-phase and three-phase designs are
compared using a 300 MW test wind farm based on 3 MW
permanent-magnet synchronous wind generators (PMSG). The
effects of different bus voltage levels, generator voltages, and
converter topologies on the converter weight and efciency are
studied in detail. The use of dcdc converters facilitates controllable stepping ratios and this opens new possibilities for generator control, such as allowing a variable dc bus voltage. The advantages of using a diode rectier, VSC with a xed dc voltage,

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ROBINSON et al.: ANALYSIS AND DESIGN OF AN OFFSHORE WIND FARM

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Fig. 1. Single line diagram of an example dc grid-based wind.

and a VSC with a variable dc voltage to control the PMSGs are

compared in Section VI.
The selected dc grid-based wind farm is compared with a similar ac grid-based wind farm in Section VII considering the cable
size and weight, transformer weight, and efciency.
A simplied model of a generator, rectier converter, and
dcdc converter, and an aggregated model of a number of wind
generators are studied in Section VIII. The aggregated model
can be used to reduce the simulation time of a large offshore
wind farm when studying the performance and control of the
wind farm grid during varying wind conditions and transients.

Fig. 2. MV dcdc resonant converter circuit diagram.

to operate only in discontinuous mode (where

, from
(26) and (27) in the Appendix) to avoid high thyristor reverse-re.
covery losses caused by high
The power of the converter can be controlled by varying
in
the switching frequency. The average converter power
discontinuous mode operation is derived in [4], based on the
amount of energy transferred in each switching cycle (summarized in the Appendix), and is given by

II. TEST SYSTEM OVERVIEW

This paper only considers wind generators based on direct
drive PMSGs, which have been applied in many commercial
installations and are preferred for large, remote offshore wind
farms [6], [7]. They have low maintenance (no gearboxes) and
a high efciency over a wide power range. Commercial PMSGs
have not been employed with dc collection grids but similar
topologies have been studied [5], [6]. Fig. 1 shows the general
connection diagram.
A commercial PMSG will have two back-to-back VSC converters to provide variable speed turbine rotation. With dc connecting grids, the generator-facing converter (rectier) is retained but the grid-facing VSC should be replaced with a dcdc
converter. The step-up dcdc converter is required to reduce
cable losses. The converters are then connected in parallel to
a MV dc bus, using a star or ring or another dc grid topology
[1], [2]. In order to reduce transmission losses another single
HV dc-dc converter is used to connect to an HVDC line. Since
an offshore wind farm requires costly platforms, it is important
to reduce both the weight and size of the converters.
Three possible rectier topologies are considered: (a) employing a xed LV dc voltage and VSC rectier, (b) connecting
to a variable LV dc voltage bus using a VSC rectier, and (c)
connecting to a variable LV dc voltage using a diode bridge
rectier.
III. DC-DC CONVERTER DESIGN
The operating principles and the design of a single-phase
dcdc converter, as shown in Fig. 2, are presented in [4] and
briey summarized in the Appendix.
When the switching frequency is less than the resonant frequency ( in the Appendix) the converter operates in discontinuous mode and the input current will be a series of pulses. If the
switching frequency is increased beyond the resonant frequency,
the converter will enter continuous mode, where switching occurs before the current through the resonant inductor has decreased to zero. In this study, the dc-dc converter is designed

(1)
where is the thyristor switching frequency.
The following design steps are used to size the converter:
1) Thyristors should be chosen that are rated for an average
current equal to half of the LV input current and rated for
the MV voltage. The selection of the thyristor turn-off time
is a trade-off since using fast turn-off thyristors will allow
a higher operating frequency (resulting in smaller resonant
capacitor and inductor sizes), but higher on-state losses.
The maximum discontinuous mode switching frequency
for a switch with a turn-off time
can be determined from an analysis of the circuit operation, since
must be less than the time from when a thyristor turns off
until it becomes forward biased (calculated in [4]), so that:
(2)
2) Using (1) and (2), the size of the resonant inductor
and capacitor
can be obtained as
(3)

(4)
is the maximum converter power.
where
In a practical converter, some additional margin (10%)
should be included in criterion (2). This will enable one
set of thyristors to completely turn off before the next
switching operation, leading to lower reverse voltage
) and consequently
across thyristors at turn-off (0.5
lower losses. To allow control tolerance, the converter will
be designed for 10% more than rated power. The diodes
should be rated for half the MV side current and the full
. To reduce reverse-recovery losses in the
voltage
diodes, the MV side inductor should be small (less than

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 25, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2010

10% of the LV size inductor) as this will allow the diodes

to turn off with only a small reverse voltage across the
diodes.
3) Size LV and MV lter capacitors to limit the voltage variand
ation per current pulse to less than a margin
(15%). Using the energy balance equation on the
LV capacitor where the energy transferred in each current
pulse given in (1), the LV capacitor size is

(5)
Fig. 3. Circuit diagram of a MV three-phase converter circuit using two resonant inductors on the LV side.

Similarly, the MV capacitor size is

(6)
4) Close in faults on the MV grid that cause the voltage level
to drop below that of the LV side could lead to loss of
control of the converter thyristors. An additional inductor
in Fig. 2) that will allow
will be added on the HV side (
the fault to be detected before the voltage across the MV
drops below the nominal voltage on the LV
capacitor
bus. Applying a short circuit across the MV terminals in
), the
Fig. 2 and using the worst case (where
is solved as [7]
time-varying voltage across

imum power of the converter

and switch turn-off time
can be determined in a similar manner to (1) and (2),
based on the circuit operation and the amount of energy transferred per cycle (derived in [8])
(8)
(9)
where
.
After selecting the thyristors, the resonant inductor and the
size of the three resonant capacitors can be obtained by solving
and
(8) and (9) for

(7)
where
and
are the initial MV voltage and current out of the converter and assumed to be average values.
to drop to
(deterUsing the minimum time for
mined by the speed of the protection equipment), (7) can
. A longer fault detecbe solved numerically to obtain
tion time can also be obtained by increasing the size of the
.
MV capacitor

(10)

(11)

The dc lter capacitors (

and
in Fig. 3) will be sized
in the same manner in (5) and (6), and the fault current limiting
can be obtained in the same way as for the
inductors
single-phase converter in Step 4 of Section III.

IV. THREE-PHASE DCDC CONVERTER DESIGN

In order to further reduce the converter weight and size,
the resonant inductor can be reduced by using a three-phase
topology, as shown in Fig. 3. For a given switching frequency
, the pulse rate at the resonant inductor in a single-phase
converter (Fig. 2) is
whereas for the three-phase converter
. The three-phase design studied in [8] proposes
(Fig. 3) it is
operating in continuous mode with six resonant inductors,
which has a higher overall weight and size than the topology
in Fig. 3. The topology in Fig. 3 requires a single resonant
, but it is split into two inductors on a positive
inductor
and negative rail in order to provide central grounding and to
reduce the neutral currents.
The procedure to design the three-phase converter is similar
to that of the single-phase converter in Section III. The max-

V. WIND FARM DC GRID DESIGN

Different offshore grid topologies have been proposed; however, this study will only consider a star-type topology, where
each generator uses individual MV dcdc converters and individual MV cables connected to a common offshore HV dcdc
converter. The MV grid voltage level has a large impact on the
efciency and component sizes of the dcdc converters. The
voltage selection will depend on the overall voltage gain between the wind turbines and the HVDC line, as well as the power
of the wind farm.
Most wind generators have an output voltage of less than
1000 V; however, some manufacturers have machines that operate with a higher output voltage (such as the Multibrid M5000,
which has an output voltage of 3300 V, or the Harakosan Z72,

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2167

which has an output voltage of 4000 V). Three different 3 MW

wind generators are considered, with rms output voltages of
1000,
3300, and
4000 V. The HVDC voltage
depends on the converter and the cable requirements. Current
XLPE cables have ratings for over 300 kV and have been used
in a number of VSC HVDC projects. In this design, the HVDC
voltage is set to 300 kV.
The main converter losses occur in the thyristors, diodes,
and the resonant inductor. The thyristor and diode losses are
estimated based on the converter equations and by using switch
datasheets, which allow estimation of the turn-on, turn-off,
on-state, and leakage losses [9]. The inductor core and conductor losses are estimated based on the materials and size.
The selection of the thyristors inuences both the silicon
losses, as well as the sizing of the resonant inductor and
capacitor, as studied in [5]. Using fast turn-off thyristors allows switching at a higher frequency, lowering the size of
the resonant inductor and capacitor, and reducing losses in
the inductor. However, their conduction losses are higher and
since the blocking voltage is lower, more series switches are
needed. The thyristor switches selected are type Polovodi e
c
TR918F-1490 with a maximum turn-off time set to 150 s
for the 3 MW converters, and ABB 34Q5200 thyristors with a
maximum turn-off time of 700 s for the 300 MW converter.
Multiple series connected switches are used so that the total
rated voltage of a valve is 200% of the rated blocking voltage.
The rectier converter is considered to be a VSC using sinusoidal pulse width modulation (PWM) with a xed dc voltage
given by [7]:
(12)
where is the modulation index, which is set to 0.95. The losses
of other generator control methods that use a variable dc voltage
are studied in Section VI.
can be estimated considering
The MV cable losses
an average cable length between a wind generator and the MV
converter station of 3 km, calculated as
(13)
is the resistance of the MV dc cable, which will
where
depend on the cable size, length, and type, as well as the temperature. The cable resistance is estimated using data for 70 mm
General Cable aluminum XLPE cables at 20 C.
The total offshore grid losses at rated power for different MV
bus voltages are shown in Fig. 4 for the three wind generator
types. It can be seen that the losses are very high for wind generators with an output voltage of 1000 V. These generators have
the highest LV current (the highest voltage gain) and they may
not be suitable for large wind farms connected to high voltage
6.8
grids. In further studies we adopt 4 kV generators
kV). The highest losses are in the MV converter switches and
inductors, which account for more than 50% of the total grid
losses. The loss components in the MV switches as the function of converter power are shown in Fig. 5 (using 4 kV wind
generators and a 40 kV MV grid voltage). As can be seen, the

Fig. 4. Offshore grid losses at rated power and different MV voltages (losses
include MV and HV 1-phase converter switches, inductors, MV cable losses).

Fig. 5. Thyristor and diode loss components in a 3 MW single-phase resonant

converter with 6.88/40 kV voltage gain.

largest loss component is caused by the on-state losses. It is

possible to reduce these losses by using switches with a lower
on-state voltage drop; however, this will increase the turn-off
losses (because of higher reverse-recovery losses) and increase
the inductor size and losses. The MV cable losses account for
around 0.5% for a 40 kV bus voltage.
The above study is repeated assuming three-phase dcdc
converters are used. The silicon costs will be higher with
three-phase converters but a range of other advantages may
offer overall benets. Fig. 6 shows the total grid losses for the
single-phase and three-phase designs. The converter component sizes are shown in Tables I and II, where it can be seen
that weight of the copper in the resonant inductor is considerably lower in the three-phase design. The three-phase design
requires more resonant capacitors, but they are rated for half
the voltage. It also needs more switches, but they have a lower
current rating (1/3 of rated current). Overall the size of resonant
inductors and the lters of the three-phase topology will be
advantageous in offshore applications. It should be noted that
the inductors are designed to minimize the cost of materials
and losses over a 20 year lifetime and they are air-core toroidal
designs. Only the copper mass is given, and the total weight
will be heavier due to insulation, structure, and auxiliaries.
VI. ANALYSIS OF GENERATOR CONTROL STRATEGIES
The generator control strategy also affects the grid efciency,
and can be especially important at low power levels, since wind
turbines typically operate at 30% of the rated power.

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is the magnetic ux. Since the ux of the rotor is not controllable, the magnitude of the armature voltage will vary depending
on the rotational speed of the wind turbine. In order to achieve
maximum power point tracking, and to prevent overspeeding
and overvoltages at high winds, the rotational speed will vary
according to the wind speed variation.
of the wind turbine is related
The mechanical power
to the wind speed
by [6]:
(15)
Fig. 6. Total losses at rated power for the dc grid based on a single- and threephase resonant converters at different MV bus voltage levels (losses include the
MV and HV converter switches and inductors, and MV cable losses).

where is the air density,

is the turbine radius, and
is
the torque coefcient, which depends on the tip speed ratio and
is
blade pitch. Based on (15), the electrical frequency

TABLE I
COMPONENT SIZES AND LOSSES FOR SINGLE AND THREE-PHASE 3 MW MV
= 40 kV)
CONVERTER DESIGNS (V = 6.88 V}, (V

(16)
where
is the number of pole pairs, and is the tip speed ratio
of the wind turbine. To simplify analysis, losses in the mechanical components will be ignored, and the turbine will be controlled to have a tip speed ratio of 7, corresponding to a torque
of 0.5, for wind velocities up to the rated wind
coefcient
speed of the turbine.
B. Rectier Converter

TABLE II
COMPONENT SIZES AND LOSSES FOR SINGLE AND 3-PHASE 300 MW HV
= 40 kV, V = 300 kV)
CONVERTER DESIGNS (V

The resonant dc-dc converter has advantages over other dc-dc

converters in that it has a readily controllable voltage stepping
ratio (gain). The gain depends on the switching frequency, as
seen in (1). This advantage opens the possibility of operating
the dc grid (either
or
or both) at variable voltage.
Three different control methods for a PMSG connected to a dc
grid will be compared based on their efciencies: (a) rectier
, (b) rectier VSC with variable
, and
VSC with xed
(c) diode rectier.
a) VSC with a xed dc voltage: the active power from the
generator will be controlled by the dcdc converter according to maximum power point tracking (MPPT), and
the VSC rectier will maintain the dc voltage at rated level
and control generator reactive current (to minimize losses)
[10].
b) VSC with a variable dc voltage: the active power from the
generator will be controlled (according to MPPT) by the
dcdc converter, and the VSC will control the dc voltage
to maintain a constant modulation index and keep the
power factor angle at zero. Using (12) and assuming the
winding resistance of the generator to be small, the dc bus
is given by [7]
voltage
(17)

A. Generator
For PMSGs, the armature voltage of the machine is given by
(14)
where
is a machine constant, is the generator frequency
is the number of turns in an armature phase, and
(in Hertz),

where
is the ac current,
is the synchronous inductance of the generator, and from (14) and (16), the armais related to the power of the wind
ture voltage
turbine
by
(18)

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TABLE III
PMSG AND WIND TURBINE CHARACTERISTICS

This control method has signicantly lower harmonics

than method (a), since the modulation index is kept high.
Indirectly this implies less fatigue and a smaller generator.
This operation method is not possible with a conventional
back-to-back VSC but it is feasible if a VSC connects to
a dcdc converter.
c) Diode rectier: MPPT will be achieved by varying the
power through the dcdc converter based on the speed
is
signal from the generator. The LV bus voltage
given by [7]

Fig. 7. Rectier losses, dc-dc converter losses, and dc voltage levels for different 3 MW wind generator control methods over the whole power range.

(19)
where is the dc current,
is the inductance on the
ac side of the converter. Using (16), (18), and (19), the
and the
relationship between the LV bus voltage
can be obtained in the same way
generator power
as for method (b).
Losses in the VSC or diode rectiers were calculated at all
power levels based on switch datasheet information and the converter waveforms. The efciency of the different conversion systems is compared assuming a PMSG and wind turbine with characteristics listed in Table III. In all systems, the voltage of the
PMSG will be boosted to connect to a 40 kV MV dc bus. The
cut-in wind speed will be 4 m/s (corresponding to 3.5% of rated
power) and the rated wind speed is 12.3 m/s. The VSCs are designed using sinusoidal PWM with a switching frequency of
1260 Hz and using ABB 0800N330100 insulated-gate bipolar
transistors (IGBTs) (3.3 kV, 0.8 kA). The diode bridge design
uses ABB 08D5000 diodes (5.2 kV, 0.8 kA). All valves use multiple series switches so that each switch is rated for twice the
blocking voltage. All on-state, leakage, and switching losses are
considered, although reverse-recovery losses are ignored in the
diode rectier because of a small voltage drop at turn-off.
Fig. 7(a) shows the total losses and Fig. 7(c) shows the dc
voltage curves for the different rectiers over the whole power
range.
C. DCDC Converter
Using (1), it can be concluded that the converter operating
ratio. Therefore
frequency primarily depends on the
reduces as the power reduces (as in topoloif the voltage
gies (b) and (c) above) the operating frequency remains high.
This will result in lower harmonics. The losses in topologies (b)
and (c) will be higher than those shown in Fig. 5, since the LV
current is higher.
Methods (a) and (b) will use the same dc-dc converter design
(3.3 MW, 6.88/40 kV); however, method (c) will have a max-

Fig. 8. Total rectier and dcdc converter losses for different generator control
methods for a 3 MW wind generator.

imum dc voltage of 5.55 kV and, therefore, the dc-dc converter

design will differ (the same design procedure outlined in Section III is used for a 3.3 MW 5.55/40 kV dc-dc converter). The
dc-dc converter losses (including switching losses and losses in
the resonant inductor) are shown in Fig. 7(b).
Fig. 8 shows the total offshore converter losses [Fig. 7(a) and
(b)] for the considered topologies. As can be seen, full power
losses are identical in the VSC converter-based control methods.
At lower powers, the constant dc voltage method shows marginally lower losses. The diode bridge method has very low losses
in the rectier, but has high losses in the dcdc converter at low
powers (since the voltage gain is the highest).
The harmonics and torque pulsations are not quantied in this
study but they are briey studied. The diode rectier will have
particularly high 5th and 7th harmonics, leading to increased
generator losses and torque harmonics on the shaft of the rotor
[5], and may be unfeasible despite good efciency and simplicity.
Methods (b) and (c) will require considerably smaller lters
with a dcdc converter than method (a). It is concluded that
method (b) gives considerably lower harmonics than the other
two methods and, therefore, the lters and generator can be sim-

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A. AC and DC MV Cable Comparison

Cable selection depends on minimizing the cost of the cable
and the cost of losses, while satisfying the maximum current
requirements. The offshore conditions will also put additional
constraints on the cable design. Losses in the MV ac cables can
be estimated as
Fig. 9. Single line diagram of an offshore wind farm using a conventional 60
Hz ac offshore grid.

TABLE IV
CABLE WEIGHT FOR AC AND DC GRIDS (BASED ON ALUMINUM CONDUCTOR
XLPE DATA FROM GENERAL CABLE)

(20)
where
is the rms current in an MV ac cable, and
is the ac resistance of the cable. For comparison, the ac grid is
designed for the same power so that the MV cable losses are
equal to those in the dc grid. Therefore, from (13) and (20), the
MV ac grid voltage is
(21)
Based on IEC 60287-1-1, at grid frequencies of 50 or 60 Hz,
the ac and dc cable resistance will be similar for a 70-mm
stranded aluminum cable. Therefore, from (21), the MV ac grid
voltage that would have similar cable losses to those in the 40 kV
dc grid analyzed in Section V (which are around 0.5%) would
be around 28 kV.
The weight and size of the required ac and dc cables are
shown in Table IV.
B. Converter and Transformer Analysis

Fig. 10. AC grid transformer efciency for varying power levels.

Fig. 11. AC grid converter losses for varying power levels.

pler. Overall, the method (b) (VSC rectier with variable dc

voltage) may be a very attractive topology considering that harmonics will be very low and the losses will be marginally higher
than the other methods.
VII. COMPARISON WITH AN AC GRID
A comparable wind farm with an ac grid is shown in Fig. 9.
The efciency, transformer weight, and cable-size requirements
are calculated and compared with the dc-grid wind farm.

The losses in the ac-grid wind farm include one of the

back-to-back VSCs, MV and HV transformers, and the HVDC
converter. (Note that losses in the rectier VSC are not included
as they are not calculated for the dc-grid case in Section V and
will be similar.) The ac grid assumes a 28 kV ac MV bus and
the ac transformers are designed to boost the voltage from 4 kV
(at the output of the back-to-back VSC) to 28 kV, and from 28
kV to 174 kV (to connect to the 300 kV VSC HVDC converter).
The transformers are designed by using copper windings and
the core is designed using 0.23 mm grain oriented silicon steel,
where the ux density is xed at 1.7 T, and the current density
is set to 4 A/mm . The design is optimized to minimize the cost
of materials and losses over the 20 year lifetime of the wind
farm, where the losses are calculated based on an average wind
speed of 10 m/s [11]. The overall efciency of the HV and LV
transformers at varying power levels is given in Fig. 10.
The VSC losses are calculated by assuming 2-level topologies for both the HVDC converter and generator inverter, with
operation at 1260 Hz and 1980 Hz, as shown in Fig. 11. The LV
VSC is designed using ABB 0800N330100 IGBTs and the HV
VSC is designed using ABB 1200G450300 IGBTs.
While lower losses (22.5%) can be achieved when operating
at 1260 Hz, this will require more expensive lters. Also, lower
losses of 12% can be achieved by using IGBTs rated for higher
current levels, but will require a higher number of switches (because of lower voltage ratings). The overall losses in the ac grid
will be around 6% (Figs. 10 and 11), which is slightly better than
the losses of the 40 kV dc grid analyzed in Section V, which
were around 6.5%.
Using material densities of 7.65 g/cm for the silicon steel
and 8.94 g/cm for the copper winding, the total calculated

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2171

TABLE V
TOTAL AC TRANSFORMER CORE AND CONDUCTOR WEIGHT COMPARED TO
DCDC CONVERTER TOROID CONDUCTOR WEIGHT

Fig. 12. Simplied wind generator model.

weight of the transformer core and conductor is shown in

Table V. It is clear that the weight of dc inductors is signicantly lower, in particular, if three-phase dcdc converters are
used.
This lower weight will have cost benets because of a much
smaller subsea supporting structure.
VIII. AGGREGATED WIND FARM MODEL FOR
STEADY STATE AND TRANSIENT STUDIES
The detailed PSCAD models of the different wind generator
converters can be used at the expense of simulation time and
exibility. In order to study operating principles and transient
responses of a large dc grid-based wind farm (like that shown
in Fig. 1), a simplied model of the basic unit including generator, rectier-VSC, and MV dc-dc converter is required. For
simplicity and without loss of generality, we assume a conventional control method with a constant dc voltage:
rectier VSCmaintains a constant LV dc bus voltage
(method (a) from Section VI);
MV dc-dc convertercontrols the power through the converter to achieve MPPT;
HV dc-dc convertermaintains constant MV dc bus
voltage.
The following assumptions are used to create the simplied
model:
1) Constant LV dc bus voltage: similar to the ac grid-based
PMSG control in [10], the generator VSC will be considered decoupled from the dc-dc converter. This is a valid
rst approximation since the fast rectier control maintains
the LV dc bus voltage within a small tolerance.
2) DCDC converter is disabled after faults: a close-in fault
on the MV bus side can effectively short circuit the resonant capacitors and this would imply that the LV dc bus
would discharge into the fault through the thyristors and
diodes. To prevent this, the MV dcdc converter should
be quickly disabled for faults on the MV bus. This can be
to allow fault
achieved by using a sufciently large
detection and control reaction to interrupting the thyristor
ring pulses.
Based on these assumptions, a simplied model can be created by using a controllable current source and the passive components connected to the MV side of the converter, as shown in
Fig. 12. The dcdc converter responds like a current source as
can be seen in (1). The power is directly proportional to the control signal (operating frequency) for a constant output voltage
. Under normal operation, the current from the converter
will ow into the HV side and the voltage across the resonant
and the HV capacitor
will be equal to the
capacitor
and
will
HV bus voltage. During a fault on the HV bus,

Fig. 13. Simplied generator output power model.

discharge into the fault. After the capacitors have discharged,

) will discharge to the fault
the energy in inductors ( and
through the uncontrollable diode bridge which is represented
. The current
is interrupted when controller
by diode
responds to a fault.
in the model in
During normal operation, the current
Fig. 12 will depend on the power from the wind turbine, which
will be limited by the MV bus voltage. Based on (1) and Fig.
12, the control current as a function of the output power of the
PMSG will be given by

(22)
where
is the generator output power, and
is the
rated MV bus voltage. The control delay due to the VSC and
dcdc converter can be modeled using a time delay.
Following the methods in [12], the generator is modeled using
and the torque coefa time delay, and the tip speed ratio
will be assumed constant. The model for the PMSG
cient
output power used in the simplied model is shown in Fig. 13,
is the wind velocity,
is the generator torque,
is
where
the generator rotational speed,
is the reference rotational
speed (based on the wind speed and a tip speed ratio of 7), and
is a time lag to model the generator dynamics.
A single aggregated model of parallel connected MV converters can be obtained by solving for the Norton current
and impedance of multiple circuits connected in parallel.
in Fig. 12) will not be
During normal operation, the diode (
conducting and, therefore, the Norton equivalent current and
and
) can be obtained by considering the
impedance (
diode as an open circuit
(23)

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER DELIVERY, VOL. 25, NO. 4, OCTOBER 2010

Fig. 14. Aggregated wind farm Norton equivalent circuit.

Fig. 16. Total output current during a fault and recovery on the MV bus for ve
converters using detailed models and an aggregated model.

caused by insufcient detail in modeling the LV converter side.

The extremely high transient current will depress the voltage of
which, in turn, affects the power
the LV side dc capacitor
ow. In addition, in the actual dcdc converter, the current will
transiently reduce to zero for a short period of time (at 35.4 s
in Fig. 16) since the rate of increase of the switching frequency
must be limited to avoid loss of control.
Fig. 15. Detailed and aggregated model output power of ve 3 MW wind turbines for changing wind conditions and during an MV bus fault.

(24)
where is the number of parallel connected converters. In a
practical system, the poles in (24) will be further damped with
the internal component resistances.
After a fault on the MV bus that causes the voltage to drop
and the capacitors to discharge, the HV side diodes
will conduct until the energy in the converter inductors has discharged. Therefore, the equivalent fault impedance will be
(25)
Since it is assumed that the converter is disabled during a
therefore is equal
fault, the current out of the converter
to zero. By combining (23) and (25), the resulting aggregated
model is shown in Fig. 14.
The aggregated model is validated against PSCAD models
of ve 3 MW parallel connected wind generators with detailed
converter models using the single-phase design in Table I and
of 100 mH. Fig. 15 shows the model verication as
with an
the wind speed changes from 10 m/s to 7 m/s, then increases to
the rated wind speed, before a 0.1 s low-impedance MV bus fault
occurs at 35 s. The wind farm recloses after a delay of around
0.3 s (note that in a typical offshore wind farm, a fault on the
MV grid would be permanent due to the use of electrical cables
and there would be no automatic reclose). The results conrm
that the aggregated model is sufciently accurate.
The total wind farm current under the fault condition from
Fig. 15 is shown in detail in Fig. 16. It is clear that the simplied model accurately models the fault transients including the
capacitors discharging into the fault. Some differences occur
during the fault recovery stage (at around 35.35 s), which are

IX. CONCLUSION
A dc collection grid using resonant dcdc converters will
allow a substantial reduction in the weight of the cables and
magnetic components compared with a typical ac collection
grid for offshore wind farms. The losses of a dc grid-based
wind farm using single-phase resonant converters will be around
6.5% (not including generator and rectier losses), which is
found to be slightly higher than a comparable ac system. The
use of dcdc converters opens the possibility for operation at
variable dc voltage, reducing the harmonics and resulting in a
modest decrease in efciency. Using a diode bridge rectier
could allow further reduction in losses but the issues with harmonics remain unresolved. A simplied aggregated model is
shown to be sufciently accurate to be used to model numerous
wind generators with a much improved simulation time.
APPENDIX
The converter equations for the inner resonant circuit (Fig. 2),
consisting of the LV-side inductor
, the resonant capacitor
, and considering a constant LV bus voltage
, are
given by [4] and [7]

(26)
(27)
and
are the initial resonant inductor current and
where
capacitor voltage and
and
are the resonant frequency and
characteristic impedance dened as
(28)

ROBINSON et al.: ANALYSIS AND DESIGN OF AN OFFSHORE WIND FARM

2173

The discontinuous mode power transfer in (1) is derived in

[4] by analyzing the total energy transferred into the MV dc bus
in each switching cycle, given by

[11] R. Del Vecchio, B. Poulin, P. Feghali, D. M. Shah, and R. Ahuja,

Transformer Design Principles: With Applications to Core-Form
Power Transformers. New York: Gordon and Breach, 2001, pp.
543578.
[12] A. Perdana, Dynamic models of wind turbines, Ph.D. dissertation,
Chalmers Univ. Technol., Gotteborg, Sweden, 2008.

(29)
where is the time when the MV side diodes start conducting
) and
is assumed to be constant. The
(when
in (2)) in discontinuous mode is
switching frequency (
based on the minimum time between when a switch turns off
.
and when it becomes forward biased, which is
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[1] P. Bresesti, W. Kling, R. Hendriks, and R. Vailati, HVDC connection
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[2] L. Max and S. Lundberg, System efciency of a DC/DC converterbased wind farm, Wind Energy, vol. 11, pp. 109120, Oct. 2008.
[3] C. Meyer, M. Hoing, A. Peterson, and R. De Doncker, Control and
design of DC grids for offshore wind farms, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl.,
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[5] A. Faulstich, J. Stinke, and F. Wittwer, Medium voltage converter for
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103111, 200297.
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converter for medium power applications, presented at the Electr.
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Jonathan Robinson received the M.Eng. degree from McGill University, Montral, QC, Canada.
Currently, he is a Research Associate at the University of Aberdeen,
Aberdeen, U.K. His interests are power converters, renewable energy, and
protection.

Dragan Jovcic (S97M00SM06) received the Diploma Engineer degree in

control engineering from the University of Belgrade, Serbia, in 1993 and the
Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, in 1999.
He is a Senior Lecturer with the University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, U.K. He
was a Visiting Professor at McGill University, Montral, QC, Canada, in 2008,
and a Lecturer with the University of Ulster, Ulster, U.K., from 2000 to 2004. His
research interests are high-power electronics, exible ac transmission systems,
and HVDC.

Gza Jos (M82SM89F06) received the M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from McGill University, Montral, QC, Canada, .
He has been a Professor with McGill University since 2001 and is the Canada
Research Chair in Power Electronics applied to Power Systems since 2004. He
is involved in fundamental and applied research related to the application of
high-power electronics to power conversion, including distributed generation
and wind energy, and to power systems. He was previously with ABB, cole
de Technologie Suprieure, and Concordia University, Montral. . He has been
involved in consulting activities in power electronics and power systems, and
with CEATI as Technology Coordinator of the Power Systems Planning and
Operation Interest Group from 2000 to 2003.
Prof. Jos is the Founder and was the rst Executive Director of the Institute
of Electrical Power Engineering from 2001 to 2006. He is active in a number
of IEEE Industry Applications Society committees, including Chair of the Industrial Power Converter Committee and the IEEE Power Engineering Society
working groups. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and
of the Engineering Institute of Canada.