Perturbation Observer based Adaptive Passive Control and Applications for VSC-HVDC Systems and FACTS Devices

The technology of voltage source converter based high voltage direct current (VSC-HVDC) system and devices used in flexible AC transmission systems (FACTS) has evolved significantly over the past two decades. It is used to effectively enhance power system stability. One of the important issues is how to design an applicable nonlinear adaptive controller for these devices to effectively handle the system nonlinearities and uncertainties. Passive control (PC) has been proposed for the control of nonlinear systems based on Lyapunov theory, which has the potential to improve the system damping as the beneficial system nonlinearities are remained instead of being fully cancelled. However, PC is not applicable in practice as it requires an accurate system model. Adaptive passive control (APC) and robust passive control (RPC) have been developed to handle some specific type of system uncertainties based on strict assumptions on system structure and uncertainty. However, their applications are limited as various system uncertainties exist. This thesis aims to develop a perturbation observer based adaptive passive control (POAPC) to make PC applicable in practice. The combinatorial effect of system nonlinearities, parameter uncertainties, unmodelled dynamics and time-varying external disturbances is aggregated into a perturbation, which is estimated by a perturbation observer (PO). The proposed approach does not require an accurate system model and can handle various system uncertainties. POAPC is applied to two-terminal VSC-HVDC systems to handle various system uncertainties. The VSC-HVDC system model is firstly developed, the proposed controller can inject an extra system damping and only the measurement of direct current (DC) voltage, active and reactive power is needed. The effectiveness ofPOAPC is verified by simulation in comparison with that of passive control (PC) and proportional-integral (PI) control. Moreover, a hardware experiment is carried out to verify its implementation feasibility and applicability. A passive controller is designed for multi-terminal VSC-HVDC (VSC-MTDC) systems via energy shaping, in which the dynamics related to the active power, reactive power, and DC cable voltage is transformed into an output strictly passive form. Then the remained internal dynamics related to DC cable current and common DC voltage is proved to be asymptotically stable in the context of Lyapunov criterion. PC is applied on a four-terminal VSC-MTDC system under eight cases to evaluate its control performance. POAPC is developed on the VSC-MTDC system to maintain a consistent control performance under different operating points and provide a significant robustness to parameter uncertainties, together with other unmodelled dynamics and time-varying external disturbances. Simulation results are provided to evaluate the control performance of POAPC in comparison to that of PI control and PC. Perturbation observer based coordinated adaptive passive control (POCAPC) is proposed for excitation controller (EC) and FACTS controller on both single machine infinite bus (SMIB) systems and multi-machine power systems. Only the range of control Lyapunov function (CLF) is needed and the dependence of an accurate system model can be partially reduced, thus POCAPC can be easily applied to multi-machine power systems. Its control performance is compared with that of conventional proportional-integral-derivative and lead-lag (PID+LL) control, coordinated passive control (CPC) and coordinated adaptive passive control (CAPC) on both an SMIB system and a three-machine power system by simulation. Then a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test is undertaken to verify the implementation feasibility of the proposed controller

An improved droop-based control strategy for MT-HVDC systems

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This paper presents an improved droop-based control strategy for the active and reactive power-sharing on the large-scale Multi-Terminal High Voltage Direct Current (MT-HVDC) systems. As droop parameters enforce the stability of the DC grid, and allow the MT-HVDC systems to participate in the AC voltage and frequency regulation of the different AC systems interconnected by the DC grids, a communication-free control method to optimally select the droop parameters, consisting of AC voltage-droop, DC voltage-droop, and frequency-droop parameters, is investigated to balance the power in MT-HVDC systems and minimize AC voltage, DC voltage, and frequency deviations. A five-terminal Voltage-Sourced Converter (VSC)-HVDC system is modeled and analyzed in EMTDC/PSCAD and MATLAB software. Different scenarios are investigated to check the performance of the proposed droop-based control strategy. The simulation results show that the proposed droop-based control strategy is capable of sharing the active and reactive power, as well as regulating the AC voltage, DC voltage, and frequency of AC/DC grids in case of sudden changes, without the need for communication infrastructure. The simulation results confirm the robustness and effectiveness of the proposed droop-based control strategy

Commande non-linéaire et analyse de stabilité de réseaux multi-terminaux haute tension à courant continu

This dissertation was devoted to the study of multi-terminal high voltage direct current (MTDC) networks. The main contributions were in the field of nonlinear automatic control, applied to power systems, power electronics and renewable energy sources. The research work was started with the intention of filling some gaps between the theory and the practice, in particular: 1) to investigate various control approaches for the purpose of improving the performance of MTDC systems; 2) to establish connections between existing empirical control design and theoretical analysis; 3) to improve the understanding of the multi-time-scale behavior of MTDC systems characterized by the presence of slow and fast transients in response to external disturbances. As a consequence, this thesis work can be put into three areas, namely nonlinear control design of MTDC systems, analysis of MTDC system's dynamic behaviors and application of MTDC systems for frequency control of AC systems.Cette thèse a été consacrée à l'étude des réseaux multi-terminaux haute tension à courant continu (MTDC). Les principales contributions étaient dans le domaine du contrôle automatique non linéaire, appliquées aux systèmes électriques, électronique de puissance et les sources d'énergie renouvelables. Le travail de recherche a été lancé avec l'intention de combler certaines lacunes entre la théorie et la pratique, en particulier: 1) d'enquêter sur diverses approches de contrôle pour le but d'améliorer la performance des systèmes MTDC; 2) d'établir des connexions entre la conception du contrôle empiriques existantes et analyse théorique; 3) d'améliorer la compréhension du comportement multi-échelle de temps des systèmes MTDC caractérisés par la présence de transitoires lents et rapides en réponse aux perturbations externes. En conséquence, ce travail de thèse peut être mis en trois domaines, à savoir la conception non linéaire de commande de systèmes MTDC, analyse des comportements dynamiques de système MTDC et l'application de systèmes MTDC pour le contrôle de fréquence des systèmes de climatisation

Optimal power flow and unified control strategy for multi-terminal HVDC systems

© 2019 IEEE. This paper presents an automation strategy for multi-terminal HVDC (MT-HVDC) systems combining a dc optimal power flow (dc OPF) routine and a unified reference controller (URC). In the presented automatic framework, the dc OPF algorithm is implemented at the power dispatch center (PDC) of the MT-HVDC system to find optimal reference operation points of the power converters to minimize the losses during the operation of the MT-HVDC grid and solves the contradiction between minimizing losses and preventing commutation failure. At the local control systems, the operating points of the voltage-source converter (VSC) stations are tuned based on the calculations executed in the PDC, which enables fast response to power fluctuation and ensures a stable dc voltage. However, if the communication between the two control layers is lost, the MT-HVDC grid remains stable based on the pre-defined $V$-$P$ droop characteristics for the power converter stations till the connection establishes again, and a set of new operating points is generated and sent. The static and dynamic simulations conducted on the CIGRE B4 HVDC test grid establish the efficient and effective grid control performance with the proposed automation strategy. The analysis shows that the proposed control scheme achieves the desired minimum losses while, at the same time, satisfying the system constraints

Power Management and Protection in MT-HVDC Systems with the Integration of High-Voltage Charging Stations

Due to the significant increase of the long-distance electricity demand, effective use of Distributed Generations (DGs) in power system, and the challenges in the expansion of new transmission lines to improve the reliability of power system reliability, utilizing Multi-Terminal HVDC (MT-HVDC) technology is an applicable, reliable, and cost-effective solution in hybrid AC/DC grids. MT-HVDC systems have flexibility in terms of independent active and reactive power flow (reversible control) and voltage control. Interconnecting two AC grids with different frequencies and transmitting electricity for the long-distance with low power-losses, which leads to less operation and maintenance costs, can be done through the MT-HVDC systems. The integration of large-scale remote DGs, e.g., wind farms, solar power plants, etc., and high-voltage charging stations for Electric Vehicles (EVs) into the power grid have different issues, such as economic, technical, and environmental challenges of transmission and network expansion/operation of both AC and DC grids. In details, damping oscillation, voltage support at different buses, operation of grid-connected inverters to the off-shore and on-shore AC systems, integrating of existing converter stations in MT-HVDC systems without major changes in control system, evaluation of communication infrastructure and also reactive power and filtering units’ requirements in MT-HVDC systems are the technical challenges in this technology. Therefore, a reliable MT-HVDC system can be a possible mean of resolving all the above-mentioned issues. MT-HVDC systems need a control system that can bring stability to the power system during a certain period of the operation/planning time while providing effective and robust electricity. This thesis presents an improved droop-based control strategy for the active and reactive power-sharing on the large-scale MT-HVDC systems integrating different types of AC grids considering the operation of the hybrid AC/DC grids under normal/contingency conditions. The main objective of the proposed strategy is to select the best parameters of the local terminal controllers at the site of each converter station (as the primary controller) and a central master controller (supervisory controller) to control the Power Flow (PF) and balance the instantaneous power in MT-HVDC systems. In this work, (1) various control strategies of MT-HVDC systems are investigated to propose (2) an improved droop-based power-sharing strategy of MT-HVDC systems while the loads (e.g., high-voltage charging stations) in power systems have significant changes, to improve the frequency response and accuracy of the PF control, (3) a new topology of a fast proactive Hybrid DC Circuit Breaker (HDCCB) to isolate the DC faults in MT-HVDC grids in case of fault current interruption. The results from this research work would include supporting energy adequacy, increasing renewable energy penetration, and minimizing losses when maintaining system integrity and reliability. The proposed strategies are evaluated on different systems, and various case scenarios are applied to demonstrate their feasibility and robustness. The validation processes are performed using MATLAB software for programming, and PSCAD/EMTDC and MATLAB/Simulink for simulation