Control Strategy for HVDC Interconnected DC-based Offshore Wind Farm

S. M. Muyeen, R. Takahashi, T. Murata, and J. Tamura

Kitami Institute of Technology, 165 Koen-Cho, Kitami, Hokkaido, 090-8507, Japan E-mail: muyeen@pullout.elec.kitami-it.ac.jp Abstract-- This paper presents a new control strategy for DC-based offshore wind farm connected to onshore AC grid through high-voltage DC (HVDC) system. The offshore wind farm is composed of variable speed wind turbines driving permanent magnet synchronous generators. Each PMSG is connected to the DC bus through a generator side converter unit. The DC voltage of the DC-bus is stepped up using a full-bridge DC-DC converter at the offshore HVDC station. The onshore HVDC station converts the DC voltage to the suitable AC grid voltage. Detailed modeling and control strategy of the overall system are presented. Real wind speed date is used in the simulation study to obtain realistic response. The effectiveness of the control strategy is verified by simulation analyses using laboratory standard power system software package, PSCAD/EMTDC. Index Terms-- full bridge DC-DC converter, high voltage DC (HVDC), permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG), variable speed wind turbine (VSWT), and voltage source converter (VSC).

I. INTRODUCTION Recently generation of electricity using wind power has received much interest and considerable attention all over the world. According to EWEA reporting, 12% of the worlds electricity is expected to be generated from wind power by 2020 [1]. Besides the onshore trend, offshore wind farms have also been continuing its growth rapidly. Some leading countries in wind energy arena are focusing more on offshore technology. The main reasons for adopting offshore wind farm are lack of the suitable onshore sites and much better wind conditions of offshore sites (wind is much stronger and more constant). Only by 2007, the industry had developed 25 projects with the total capacity of around 1,100 MW in five countries in Europe [2], many of which are large-scale and fully commercial. Offshore wind farms are located, in general, 100 km or more far from the onshore grid connection point. It is a great challenge for both wind farm developer and transmission system operator (TSO) to transmit hundreds of MW offshore wind power over such a long distance. This paper focuses on high-voltage DC (HVDC) system for the interconnection between offshore wind farm and the onshore grid. Two types of HVDC transmission topologies, i.e., HVDC with voltage source converter using IGBTs (VSC-HVDC) and line-commutated
This study was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) from The Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture of Japan.

converter HVDC (LCC-HVDC) are used nowadays for offshore wind farm connectivity [3-10]. However, in this study, VSC based HVDC transmission system is considered for the offshore wind farm connectivity. The use of VSC-HVDC for offshore wind farm connectivity has been reported already in some literatures [5-10]. In [5, 6], the wind farm considered are composed of fixed speed induction generators. In [7], synchronous generators are used in the offshore wind farm. Doubly fed induction generator (DFIG) is chosen as wind generator for offshore wind farm in [8]. Besides these, permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG) is recently becoming very popular as variable speed wind generator. In this study, PMSG is considered as the wind generator used in offshore wind farm. Variable speed wind generator, in general, is connected to the AC-bus using partial or full rating frequency converter followed by an AC transformer depending on the type of generator used. For HVDC interconnection, the AC-bus based offshore wind farm needs further AC transformer to step up the voltage at the sending end of offshore station in HVDC system, as reported in the earlier studies [5-9]. There is another option using DC-DC converter to step up the voltage at the desired level of the HVDC system in a DC-based wind farm as reported in [10]. However, the efficiency of DC-DC converter is emphasized in that study instead of the detailed control strategy. This study focuses on the overall control strategy for DC-based offshore wind farm with full bridge DC-DC converter. The full bridge DCDC converter connects the offshore wind farm with the HVDC system and boosts the DC-bus voltage of HVDC system at the desired level. II. WIND TURBINE MODELING The mathematical relation for the mechanical power extraction from the wind can be expressed as follows [11]: 2 3 Pw = 0.5 R Vw C P ( , ) (1) Where, Pw is extracted power from the wind, is the air density [kg/m3], R is blade radius [m], Vw is the wind speed [m/s] and Cp is the power coefficient which is a function of both tip speed ratio, , and blade pitch angle, [deg]. To Calculate Cp for the given values of and the following numerical approximations have been used [11-12].

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=
i =

R r Vw
1 0.003 + 0.02 3 + 1 1

(2A)
(2B)

P =P opt max

2 = 0.5 R r

R C p_opt opt

(3)

151 2.14 0.58 0.002 13.2e C p ( , ) = 0.73 i

1 . 4

18.4 i (2C)

where r denotes the rotor speed of wind turbine.

T u r b i n e O u t p u t P o w e r [ p u ]

L o c u s o f m a x i m u m c a p t u r e d p o w e r

From eq.(3), it is clear that the optimum generated power is proportional to the cube of rotational speed, r. The range of rotor speed variation is, in general, approximately 5 to 16 rpm. If the rotor speed exceeds the nominal speed of PMSG, the pitch controller is used to control the rotational speed. Therefore, the PMSG will not generate more than rated power during high wind condition. In this study, the pitch controller shown in [13] is considered. III. MODEL SYSTEM

1 . 2 1 . 0 0 . 8 0 . 6
1 1 m / s 1 3 m / s 1 2 m / s

0 . 4 0 . 2 0 . 0
6 m / s

1 0 m / s 9 m / s 8 s m / s 7 m /

0 . 2

0 . 4

0 . 6

0 . 8

1 . 0

1 . 2

1 . 4

S p e e d [ p u ]
Fig. 1. Turbine characteristic with maximum power point tracking

In VSWT, generated power from the turbine depends on the power coefficient, Cp. For the wind speed of VSWT, there is a specific turbine rotational speed which generates the maximum power. In this way, the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) for each wind speed increases the energy generation in VSWT. In this paper, the rotor diameter of a 2.5MW wind turbine, 84m, is used. The power coefficient curve with the MPPT curve is shown in Fig. 1, from which it can be seen that, for any particular wind speed, there is a rotational speed, r, which generates the maximum power, Pmax, called also as the optimum power, Popt. When the wind speed changes, the rotational speed is controlled to follow the maximum power point trajectory. It should be noted here that the measurement of the precise wind speed is not so easy. Therefore, it is better to calculate the optimum power, Popt, without measuring wind speed as shown below.
AC-DC

The single line diagram of the proposed system composed of offshore wind farm, two HVDC stations, and a DC cross-linked polyethylene (XLPE) cable is shown in Fig. 2. The system is connected to the infinite bus through AC transmission line. In the DC based offshore wind farm each PMSG is connected to the DCbus through an AC-DC converter. The offshore wind farm power capacity is considered as 150 MW. The parameters of the PMSG are shown in Table. I. HVDC cable parameters are available in [10]. The system base is 150 MVA. The offshore HVDC station is a full bridge DC-DC converter and onshore HVDC station is standard DC-AC VSC system.
Rated Power Rated Voltage Frequency Number of Poles H TABLE I PARAMETERS OF PMSG 75 [MW] Stator Resistance 6.0 [kV] 20 [Hz] 150 3.0 [sec] d-axis Reactance q-axis Reactance Field Flux 0.01[pu] 1.0[pu] 0.7[pu] 1.4[pu]

IV. MODELING AND CONTROL STRATEGY OF DC-BASED WIND FARM In this study, it is considered that wind farm is composed of VSWT driven PMSGs. Each direct drive permanent magnet synchronous generator is connected to the DCbus through a fully controlled AC-DC converter. In the simulation analyses, PMSG model available in the package software PSCAD/EMTDC [14] is used. The

DC-bus

Offshore Station
Full-bridge DC-DC Converter

AC-DC

(150 MW 150 kV, 1000 A

DC cross-linked polyethylene (XLPE) Cable

Onshore VSC
DC-AC Inverter

Main Network (500 kV, 50 Hz) CB CB

VSWT-PMSG
AC-DC

Offshore Wind Farm (150 MW)

Fig. 2. Single line diagram of the proposed system

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electrical scheme of the VSWT-PMSG adopted in the study is shown in Fig. 3. Each converter is a standard 3phase two-level unit, composed of six IGBTs and antiparallel diodes. The well-known cascaded control technique shown in Fig. 4 is adopted in this study for VSWT-PMSG operation. As the converter is directly connected to the PMSG, its q-axis current is proportional to the active power. The active power reference, Pref, is determined in such a way to provide the maximum power to the DC-bus as explained in Sect. II. On the other hand, the d-axis stator current is proportional to the reactive power. The reactive power reference is set to zero to perform unity power factor operation. The angle, r, for the transformation between abc and dq variables is calculated from the rotor speed of PMSG. In Fig. 4, the superscript n represents the individual number of each wind generator. The nominal speed is considered as the maximum rotor speed, r_max. The pitch controller activates when the rotor speed exceeds the maximum rotor speed of PMSG.
Generator-Side Converter S3n S2n S1n Vdc S6n S5n S4n C DC-bus

converter using a high frequency transformer connects the offshore wind farm to HVDC cable. The power electronic components are more or less same in both systems. The main difference in investment costs is the cost for the transformer. The transformer in DC-DC converter operates at the higher switching frequency. Since the transformer size and weight vary inversely with frequency, the higher switching frequency leads to dramatic reductions in transformer size considering core material, windings and insulation. The energy production cost for DC based wind farm is also found lower than that for AC based wind farm as reported in [15]. Considering these aspects, a full bridge (FB) DC-DC converter shown in Fig. 5 is adopted in offshore DC-based wind farm for HVDC interconnection, in this study.

Fig. 5. Conventional full-bridge (FB) PWM DC-DC converter PPMSG-DC

Fig. 3. Electrical scheme of VSWT-PMSG + Pref_n Ppmsg_n Q

* pmsg_n

Kp=0.15 Ti=0.15

PI-1 +
Id
*

I*q Iq

0.01

1+0.01s 1+0.002s

PI-2
Kp=2.0 Ti=0.025

Vd*

Qpmsg_n

Kp=0.15 Ti=0.15

PI-3 Id Id Iq

0.01

1+0.01s 1+0.002s

PI-4
Kp=2.0 Ti=0.025

Vq*

Ipmsg a,b,c wr

dq abc r

* abc V a,b,c

dq Vd* Vq*

To IGBT Switches
Carrier Signal

Fig. 4. Control block for generator side AC-DC converter

V. MODELING AND CONTROL STRATEGY OF FULL BRIDGE DC-DC CONVERTER For low ratios (i.e., 1:1 to 1:3) between input and output voltages, a boost converter shows some advantages like high efficiency and low component quantity. For higher voltage ratios transformer-less converters become less applicable. DC-DC converter with a transformer may handle the issue of higher voltage ratio. In AC-based offshore HVDC station, an AC transformer is used immediately before the VSC station. On the other hand, in DC-based wind farm a DC-DC

In the full bridge converter, the input bridge creates a high-frequency square wave at the transformer, which transforms the voltage to a higher level. The high voltage square wave is rectified using the diode bridge circuit at the secondary side of the transformer. The ripple is minimized by using output filter [10]. Since the output filter is current-stiff, the current in the switches and the transformer is approximately constant during the onperiod. There are a few ways to control the output voltage of the FB DC-DC converter. In all switching converters the output voltage is a function of input line voltage, duty cycle, and load current as well as the converter circuit element values. In DC-DC converter applications it is desired to obtain a constant output voltage in spite of the disturbances in input voltage and load current, and variations in the converter circuit element values. In this study, the simple duty cycle control based on pulse width modulation (PWM) technique is adopted as shown in Fig. 6 to maintain the voltage of offshore HVDC station at the desired level. The duty cycle control gives a mean voltage across the transformer that is equal to the output voltage divided by the transformer ratio. This is achieved by on-state where the switches in two legs are on, applying the input voltage across the transformer. In the off-state, all switches are off and the load current freewheels through the diodes in the output bridge, which gives zero voltage across the transformer. These voltage variations are eliminated by the filter inductance giving a smooth output current. The interpolated firing pulse circuit is a simulation technique concerned with generating firing pulses through interpolation procedure. This allows for exact switching between time steps based on a comparison

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between the sinusoidal reference and the high-frequency carrier signal. The error signal between the input and output voltages of the FB DC-DC converter is processed through a PI controller to obtain the duty cycle which is compared with sawtooth carrier signal to generate the interpolated firing pulses for IGBT switches.
IGBT Switch
Interpolated Firing Pulse Interpola Firing P

Time step and simulation time have been chosen 0.00002 sec and 300 sec, respectively. The simulations have been performed by using PSCAD/EMTDC [14]. The real power responses of the two PMSGs and their rotor speeds are shown in Figs. 9 and 10, respecti15

W i Speeds [m /sec] nd

14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 0 50 100

U sed i V S W T -P M S G : n 1 U sed i V S W T -P M S G : n 2

+ VOffshore

VRef PI
Sawtooth Wave

Fig. 6. Control block of DC-DC buck/boost converter

150

200

250

300

VI. MODELING AND CONTROL STRATEGY OF ONSHORE VSC STATION In this study, cascade control scheme with independent control of active and reactive currents as shown in Fig. 7 is applied to the control of onshore VSC station. The dq quantities and three-phase electrical quantities are related to each other by reference frame transformation. The angle of the transformation is detected from the three phase voltages (va,vb,vc) at the high voltage side of the grid side transformer. The d-axis current can control the dc-link voltage. The dc voltage of the DC-link capacitor is controlled constant by two PI controllers. On the other hand, the q-axis current can control the reactive power of grid-side inverter and hence the onshore grid voltage can be maintained constant. The rated dc-link voltage is 150 kV.
Grid Grid Side Inverter
Va,b,c

T i e[sec] m
Fig. 8. Wind speed data
PM SG : 1 PM SG : 2

R ealP ow ers from P M S G s [pu]

1. 2 1. 0 0. 8 0. 6 0. 4 0. 2 0. 0 0 50 100 150

200

250

300

T i e[sec] m
Fig. 9. Real powers of PMSG1 and PMSG2

R otor S peeds of P M S G s[pu]

DC-bus

1. 2 1. 0 0. 8 0. 6 0. 4 0. 2 0. 0 0 50 100 150 200

PM SG : 1 PM SG : 2

Ia,b,c Id Iq

t abc t PLL * Vd dq Vq* Vdc* dq abc Id Id

*

Carrier Signal

V*a,b,c
1+T1s 1+ T2s 1+ T3s 1+ T4s

+ Vdc * Q grid=1.0-Vgrid

PI-1 +
I*q

G1

PI-2 PI-4

Vq*

250

300

T i e[sec] m
Vd* Fig. 10. Rotor speeds of PMSG1 and PMSG2
12 8 4 0 -4 -8 -12 0 50 100 150 200 250 300

Fig. 7. Control block diagram of onshore VSC station

VII. SIMULATION RESULTS The detailed switching models are used in the power converters in this study instead of the time average model for the sake of preciseness. To speed up the simulation, only two PMSGs (each rated at 75 MVA) are considered in the wind farm shown in Fig. 2. To obtain realistic response, real wind speed data measured at Hokkaido Island, Japan, shown in Fig. 8, is used in the simulation.

Transf er P ri ary V ol orm m tage of FB D C -D C C onverter[kV ]

PI-3 -Q - + grid

G2

Iq

T i e[sec] m
Fig. 11. Transformer primary voltage of FB DC-DC converter

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vely. The voltage at the primary side of the FB DC-DC converter is shown in Fig. 11, which is basically a high frequency square wave signal. The zoom view of Fig. 11 is shown in Fig. 12. The output voltage of FB DC-DC converter is shown in Fig. 13, which is the offshore HVDC station voltage. The DC voltage at the onshore HVDC station is kept constant by the VSC as shown in Fig. 14. The onshore grid voltage shown in Fig. 15 is also maintained constant by onshore VSC station. Under the proposed control strategy, the offshore wind farm real power is successfully transmitted to the onshore grid through the HVDC cable as shown in Fig. 16.
Transf er P ri ary V ol orm m tage of FB D C -D C C O nverter[kV ]
12 8 4 0 -4 -8 -12 50. 00 50. 02 50. 04 50. 06 50. 08 50. 10

A C vol tage of O nshore G ri [pu] d

1. 2 1. 0 0. 8 0. 6 0. 4 0. 2 0. 0 0 50 100 150 200 250 300

T i e[sec] m

Fig. 15. AC voltage of onshore grid

R ealP ow er at O nshore G ri W ] d[M

150 125 100 75 50 25 0 0 50 100 150 200 250 300

T i e[sec] m
Fig. 12. Transformer primary voltage of FB DC-DC converter (zoomed)
160

T i e [sec] m

D C V ol tage at the O f shore f V SC Stati [kV ] on

140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 0 50 100 150 200 250 300

Fig. 16. Real power at onshore grid

converter can works well as the offshore HVDC station and can transmit the real power to the onshore grid through the XLPE HVDC cable. The detailed modeling and control strategy of the overall system have been presented. More sophisticated control including zero voltage switching of FB DC-DC converter will be considered in future work.
T i e[sec] m

VIII. REFERENCES
[1] The European Wind Energy Association, EWEA Publications, 2005, Wind Force 12- A Blueprint to Achieve 12% of the Worlds Electricity From Wind power by 2020, 2005, [Online], http://www.ewea.org/ The European Wind Energy Association, Delivering Offshore Wind Power in Europe: Pollicy Recommendations for Large-Scale Deployment of Offshore Wind Power in Europe by 2020, 2007. NM. Kirby, L. Xu, M. Luckett, and W. Siepman, HVDC transmission for large offshore wind farms, IEE Power Engineering Journal; 3: 135141, 2002. P. Cartwright, L. Xu, The integration of large scale wind power generation into transmission networks using power electronics, CIGRE General Session, Paris, 2004 (CD-ROM). AK. Skytt, P. Holmberg, KE. Juhlin, HVDC light for connection of wind farms, 2nd International Workshop on Transmission Networks for Offshore Wind Farms, 2001. KH. Sobrink, PL. Sorensen, P. Christensen, N. Sandersen, K. Eriksson, P. Holmberg,. DC feeder for connection of a wind farm, CIGRE Symposium, 1999. W. Lu, BT. Ooi, Optimal acquisition and aggregation of offshore wind power by multiterminal voltage-source HVDC, IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, vol.18, No.1, pp.201206, 2003. L. Xu, and B. R. Andersen, Grid Connection of Large Offshore Wind Farms Using HVDC, Wind Energy, Vol.9, No.4, pp.371382, 2006. S. M. Muyeen, R. Takahashi, T.Murata, and J.Tamura, Integration of Hydrogen Generator into Wind Farm

Fig. 13. Output voltage of FB DC-DC converter

160

D C V ol tage at the O nshore V S C Stati [kV ] on

140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 0 50 100 150 200 250 300

[2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

T i e [sec] m
Fig. 14. DC voltage of onshore HVDC station

VI. CONCLUSIONS This paper presents the HVDC interconnected power transmission scheme for a DC-based offshore wind farm. The wind generators of the offshore wind farm are connected to DC-bus through fully controlled AC-DC converters. It is shown that a full bridge DC-DC

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[10] [11] [12]

[13] [14] [15]

Interconnected HVDC System, CD Record of the IEEE PowerTech 2009 conference, Paper No. 271, Bucharest, Romania, June 2009. L. Max and Stefan Lundberg, System Efficiency of a DC/DC Converter-based Wind Farm, Wind Energy, Vol.11, No.1, pp.109-120, 2008. S. Heier, Grid Integration of Wind Energy Conversion System, Chicester, UK, John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 1998. J. G. Slootweg, S. W. H. De Hann, H. Polinder, W. L. Kling, General Model for Representing Variable Speed Wind Turbines in Power System Dynamic Simulations, IEEE Trans. on Power System, Vol.18, No.1, 2003. S. M. Muyeen, T. Murata, and J.Tamura, Stability Augmentation of a Grid-connected Wind Farm, United Kingdom, Springer, October 2008. PSCAD/EMTDC Manual, Manitoba HVDC Research Center, April 2005. Stefan Lundberg, Evaluation of wind farm layouts, Nordic Workshop on Power and Industrial Electronics (NORPIE), Poster No. 2693, Norway, June 2004.

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