Economic Comparison of HVAC and HVDCSolutions for Large Offshore Wind Farms underSpecial Consideration of Reliability

Abstract

An economic comparison of several HVAC-HVDC transmission systems from large offshore windfarms is presented. The power output from the offshore windfarm is modeled by an aggregated power curve. The transmission cost for several transmission systems is calculated for a wide range of windfarm�s rated powers, transmission distances and average wind speeds. Energy losses, energy availability and investment costs constitute the input parameters to the study. For the calculation of the energy availability an algorithm that takes in account the aggregated model of the windfarm and the probability distribution of the wind speed is introduced. The availability study is based on statistical data concerning the reliability of the components of HVAC-HVDC transmission systems