Paper accepted for presentation at the 2011 IEEE Trondheim PowerTech

Main Grid Frequency Support Strategy

for VSC-HVDC Connected Wind Farms
with Variable Speed Wind Turbines
Temesgen M. Haileselassie, Raymundo E. Torres-Olguin, Til Kristian Vrana, Graduate Student Member, IEEE,
Kjetil Uhlen, Fellow, IEEE and Tore Undeland, Fellow, IEEE

Abstract—A wind farm (WF) connected by voltage source resulting in decoupling of the mechanical speed of the turbine
converter-based HVDC (VSC-HVDC) results in a completely rotor and the frequency of the AC grid of the wind farm. This
’inertia-less’ in offshore AC grid . AC frequency is determined by in other words mean that the wind turbine-generator system
control of the VSC-HVDC on the WF side, independently of the
main grid frequency. Moreover, the rotational speed of a variable appears as ’inertia-less’ system as seen from the AC grid side.
speed wind turbine is independent of the AC frequency of the In a regular AC grid, the AC system inertia comes from the
offshore AC grid. These two aforementioned features result in aggregate of classical rotating machines which constitute the
’inertia-less’ system, that is absence of mechanical energy storage AC system. This in turn makes the AC grid less vulnerable
to accomodate for abrupt changes in generation and load. An to short term power imbalances which arise from sudden
’inertia-less’ system does not have a load-frequency response
similar to traditional AC grid with inertia, hence making it loss/insertion of loads and/or generated power [5][6].
difficult for the wind turbines to contribute to frequency support The increasing number of grid connected power converters
of the main grid. This paper develops an artificial coupling of reduces the total system inertia leading to faster and larger
the wind farm grid and the main grid frequencies, for main frequency fluctuations. Converter connected wind farms with
grid frequency support by the wind farm. Artificial frequency variable speed turbines face the same problem. A solution to
coupling is achieved by use of droop controllers for the DC
voltage control. A case of study, using PSCAD, demonstrates the mitigate this has been suggested in [5]. If the wind farm is
effectiveness of artificial frequency coupling for the main grid connected by HVDC to the onshore grid, this will result in
frequency support. a completely inertia-less AC grid inside the wind farm itself.
Index Terms—HVDC, inertia, primary frequency control, Due to this lack of energy storage, power production, losses
droop, wind generation. and consumption have to be balanced in real time [6]. In such
topology the wind farm grid frequency is solely determined
by control of the HVDC terminal it is connected to. In other
L IST OF S YMBOLS
ref words, the wind farm frequency is completely unassociated
VDC , VDC DC voltage in HVDC link and its reference to the flow of power in the wind farm grid due to lack of
PI PI controller rotational machines directly connected to the wind farm grid.
fS , fSref Grid frequency and its reference For this study, the wind farm was assumed to operate per-
fwf Frequency of the wind farm grid fectly under steady state conditions, to observe to possibilities
ma Fixed modulation index to influence the frequency stability of the main grid. The
ρS Frequency droop constant of the main grid challenge is to incorporate the wind farm in the frequency
ρwf Frequency droop constant of the wind farm support of the main grid system. In order to address this
id ,iref
d Active current component and its reference problem, artificial frequency coupling between the wind farm
grid and the main grid is proposed in this paper. Artificial
I. I NTRODUCTION frequency coupling can be achieved by use of droop controllers
Recent trends of developing offshore wind farms (OWF) for the DC voltage control of the main grid side HVDC
further away from shorelines means that HVDC should be converter and frequency control of the wind farm side HVDC
used to interconnect the wind farms with onshore grid [1][2]. converter.
The offshore AC grid is composed of several variable speed In this paper two possible ways of frequency and ac-
wind turbines, where two concepts for large turbines are tive power control for the HVDC and wind turbine power
believed to dominate in a near future: permanent magnet converters are compared. Wind generators with full power
synchronous generators (PMSG) with full power converter and converters and VSC-HVDC are considered for the study. In
double fed induction generator (DFIG) [3][4]. The electrical the first case the offshore AC grid operates with fixed AC
power output of variable speed wind turbines is controlled frequency, while power is controlled by individual turbines
by control of the converter (i.e. both in PMSGs and DFIGs), and the power transferred by HVDC link is solely governed
by the availability of wind power. In the second method,
T. M. Haileselassie, R. E. Torres-Olguin, T. K. Vrana, K. Uhlen and artificial frequency coupling of the collection grid and the
T. Undeland are with the Department of Electric Power Engineer-
ing, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway, main grid is implemented so that individual wind turbines
(e-mail: [email protected].) can contribute to the main grid frequency support. Simulations

978-1-4244-8417-1/11/$26.00 ©2011
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 2

shows that artificial frequency coupling along with frequency vSd r

droop control of the wind turbines helps to improve the iSd* +
frequency response of the main grid during disturbances. PI
ud
iSd -
123 To gates
II. VSC-HVDC CONNECTED WIND FARM TOPOLOGY L 123 Modulation
dq scheme
WITH VARIABLE SPEED WIND TURBINES L
When OWF are located a considerable distance from the
connection point on land, HVDC transmission would be the
iSq -
PI uq
preferred interconnection solution due to the high losses and
limited transmission capacity of its counterpart AC option. iSq* +
vSq r
There are two HVDC technologies currently available, namely
LCC-HVDC and VSC-HVDC, it is the VSC type HVDC
transmission which has been used for offshore wind farm Fig. 2. Inner control loop
projects due to its compactness in size and reactive power
support capability. i abc i DC
The single line diagram of the proposed system composed
of the OWF, two VSC-HVDC stations, and two DC cables
+
is shown in Fig. 1. The offshore wind farm is composed of _
variable speed wind turbines driving PMSGs. Each OWT-
PMSG is connected to the AC offshore grid through a full
converter. To speed up the simulation, an aggregated model of
the wind farm is considered. The proposed system is connected To

r
to the main grid through transmission lines. The onshore AC Gates
grid is modeled by a synchronous machine, a transformer and abc
VDC
Modulation
local load. dq scheme
P Q
’Inertialess’ offshore abc
AC grid iSd iSq dq
Onshore AC
grid

iSq Inner
Synchronous
machine iSd loop
HVDC transmission system
Local load

Pref or VDCref +
Offshore Wind Farm
PI
Fig. 1. Schematic of VSC-HVDC connected wind farm P or VDC -
Qref +
Outer PI
loop Q -
III. C ONTROLLER IMPLEMENTATION
Although the full details of both controller of WF and
HVDC are out of reach of this work, this section will give a Fig. 3. Outer control loop
brief description of each of them. First it describes the control
of a VSC, then the basic control of a WF and finally the
controller of HVDC. The DC voltage control can be either integral (I or PI) or
only proportional. The integral control gives fixed DC voltage
characteristic where as proportional controller gives a power
A. VSC Control droop characteristic with respect to the DC bus voltage. With
A VSC controller employs a hierarchical control structure a convention of positive power flow for rectifier mode of
which consists of two loop: inner loop and Outer. The basic operation and negative power for inverter mode of operation,
structure of the controller consists of an inner current control the resulting power versus DC voltage characteristic of the
loop enabling effective decoupling of active and reactive power converter for the two DC voltage control mode cases are shown
control, as it shown in Fig. 2. As it shown, converter control in Fig. 4 and Fig. 5.
is based upon the two-axis (d-q) reference frame. The slope of the middle part of the characteristic curve in
Depending on the mode of operation, the outer controller Fig. 5 corresponds to the DC voltage droop ρDC imposed
may constitute either of DC voltage controller, active/reactive on the power controller. The value ρDC determines the per
power controller, AC voltage controller or speed controller. unit droop of the DC voltage as a response to a per unit
Fig. 3 shows the complete schematic of VSC controller. increment in the power converted. The DC voltage droop

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 3

UDC reference, as shown in Fig. 6. Note that control of the

converter has an inner loop and outer loop; the inner loop
UDC,max controls the current and the outer loop controls the speed of
the machine. In high wind conditions, power is controlled by
pitching of the blades [3][7]. Changing pitch angle, Cp is
UDC,min reduced. Modifying Cp it can keep the turbine operating at
a rated power, and avoid overloading and damage both the
Inverter mode Rectifier mode generator and converter [7].

Pconv Back-to-back converter

0 Offshore AC grid

+
Fig. 4. DC voltage droop characteristics of converter terminal _

(with fixed dc voltage control mode)

abc abc
dq To To dq

r
r
Gates Gates

r
w e Sd Sq Gd Gq dc
UDC Modulation Modulation

r
r

r
r

r
scheme scheme

r
r
r
Pitch r
e abc abc
r
control dq dq
UDC,max d q Gd Gq dc
Speed Inner Inner DC and
MPPT
control loop loop Q control
UDC,min
Sq Gd
Gq
Inverter mode Rectifier mode Sd

Fig. 6. Variable speed wind turbine controller

0
The VSC converter of the wind turbine connected to the
Fig. 5. DC voltage droop characteristics of converter terminal collection grid controls the DC bus voltage in the back-to-back
(with fixed dc voltage control mode) connection there by transferring available wind power from
the wind turbine to the offshore AC grid, At the same time
the converter can provide reactive power support, as shown in
control is conceptually similar to the frequency droop control Fig. 6 [3][7].
of synchronous generators connected to AC grid. A smaller When the wind turbine is operated to support the main
size of ρDC implicates a stiffer DC bus voltage. grid frequency, it is necessary to maintain some margin below
the maximum attainable power production. In this paper,
B. Wind turbine control the power margin was kept by assigning the turbine power
reference to 90% of the maximum possible power output.
The simplified model of mechanical extraction of power in
With wind speed measurement as an input, the maximum
WF is the following
power point tracker (MPPT) determines the maximum possible
1 3 power output as well as the pitch angle and the tip speed
Pmec = ρACp (β, λ) vw (1)
2 ratio corresponding to the maximum power output. The margin
where: is achieved by changing the pitch angle of the blades to a
suboptimal position, while rotational speed is at optimal level.
Pmec Extracted mechanical power A smarter way to keep a margin could be to operate the
ρ Air density wind turbine at too high speed, which of course will reduce
A Area covered by the rotor the power output and store kinetic energy in the rotor. In case
β Pitch angle of additional power demand, the reserve can instantaneously
λ   Tip speed ratio be accessed by extracting the stored energy. This will in turn
Cp β, λ = ωR
vw Power coefficient function reduce the rotational speed, which increases the steady state
R Turbine radius power output of the turbine. This margin-scheme enables to
vw Wind speed quickly increase the power output of a wind turbine and will
be addressed in future studies.
From (1) is deduced the primary role played by ω and
β in the extraction of power of the wind turbine. Each WF is
controlled for maximal utilization of available wind energy C. HVDC Control
within the turbine-generator power capacity limits. When the In Fig. 7 a simplified schematic of VSC-HVDC connected
wind speed is below the nominal wind speed, the maximum wind farm is shown. The operation of this system is as
power point tracker (MPPT) generates the optimum speed follows. The wind farm side HVDC terminal operates at

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 4

fixed frequency and amplitude. WF controller, described in fwf

VDC
the previous section, synchronize to the voltage excited by
this HVDC terminal and regulates the power injected by the
WF. Main grid side HVDC terminal side operates using the
controller described in previous section. It could be noticed
that this HVDC terminal does not have direct control over the
power injected to the DC transmission line.

VDC fS
D. Proposed Control Strategy for Grid Frequency Support 0 0
VSC-HVDC converter VSC-HVDC converter
Since the operation mode described above is not able to (Windfarm side) (Main grid side)
provide frequency support by the wind farm to the main grid,
a modified control strategy is proposed here in order to enable
utilization of inertia of the wind turbines for frequency support Fig. 8. Wind farm frequency, and DC voltage characteristic curves
of the main AC grid. Firstly, the characteristic curves of the
HVDC transmission system
operation mechanism described in Fig. 7 are shown in Fig. 8 Offshore Wind Onshore
Farm grid VSC VSC AC grid
In Fig.9 a control scheme which realizes the relation de-
picted in Fig. 8 is shown.
C C
The idea is that fluctuations of power injected into the DC G

transmission lines will result in small DC voltage variations.

Hence by operating the main grid side HVDC terminal in DC WT fwf
To gates To gates
control
VDC fs Pm
voltage control mode, the wind farm power fluctuations would Modulation Modulation
scheme scheme
result in immediate and equal changes in power flow via the s
fwf idref fsref
DC transmission line. According to proposed idea, the desired ref ma VDC
fwf
characteristic curves of the wind turbine generation, wind farm 1
VDCref fs
frequency and HVDC transmission voltage, would look like Fixed frequency and
s

as shown in Fig. 10. AC voltage operation Pmref

The mathematical relations shown in Fig. 10 are given by:
Pm
ΔP 1
= −
Δfwf ρwf Fig. 9. Implementation of the basic control scheme

Δfwf
= K1 (2)
ΔVDC grid frequency, the constants K1 and K2 should be assigned
ΔVDC to unity. In that case, the steady state frequency droop of the
= K2 wind farm becomes ρwf . It should be noted that in order to get
ΔfS
this desired frequency droop characteristics, the wind turbine
The steady state relation between incremental wind power should operate with some power margin (or ’reserve’) below
generation (ΔP ) and incremental main grid frequency (Δfwf ) the maximum attainable. The schematic of the control strategy,
is given by (2). proposed in this paper to get the droop relations described
ΔP ΔP Δfwf ΔVDC K1 K2 above, is shown in Fig. 11.
= =− (3)
Δfwf Δfwf ΔVDC ΔfS ρwf
In order to get similar amount of per-unit changes for the IV. S IMULATIONS
main grid frequency, the DC bus voltage and the wind farm A VSC-HVDC connected wind farm was modeled in
PSCAD in order to validate the proposed control strategy,

Main grid side

Wind farm side HVDC transmission HVDC terminal
HVDC terminal system
VSC VSC
fwf VDC
Offshore Wind Farm P
Onshore AC
AC grid
C C grid Slope= - 1/  wf Slope=K1 Slope=K2
G

fwf VDC fS
0 0
Windfarm turbine VSC-HVDC converter VSC-HVDC converter
Fixed frequency, Fixed DC voltage
(Windfarm side) (Main grid side)
fixed amplitued modulation control

Fig. 10. Desired characteristic curves of the wind turbine generation,

Fig. 7. Schematic showing the operation mode of the HVDC terminals wind farm frequency and HVDC transmission voltage

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 5

HVDC transmission system Onshore AC

Offshore Wind grid 1.004
Collection grid

Frequency/DC voltage (pu)

C C 1.002
G

WT
fwf 0.998
To gates To gates
control fs Pm
Modulation VDC Modulation Main grid frequency (pu)
scheme scheme 0.996 HVDC voltage (pu)
VDCref idref Wind farm frequency (pu)
fwf 0.994
ma VDC
1 s
VDC fsref
1 0.992
VDCref 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
fwfref 205
fsref fs 1
s
2
200
fs Wind farm power (MW)
Pmref 195

Power (MW)
Pm
190

185
Fig. 11. Schematic of the proposed control
180

175
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
as shown in Fig. 11. The main grid was modeled by a Time (s)
synchronous generator with droop characteristics. The wind
turbine was modeled by full power converter connected to Fig. 12. Responses without frequency support from the wind farm
wind turbine driven synchronous generator. The wind farm was
modeled by an aggregate model of the wind turbines, where
turbine blade, turbine-governor, synchronous generator and 1.001

back to back connected full power converters were included.

Frequency/DC voltage (pu)

1
For the sack of simplicity, constant wind speed was considered 0.999
in the simulations.
0.998
Main parameters used in the modeling are listed in Table I. Main grid frequency (pu)
Load insertion of 25 MW within the main grid were simulated 0.997 HVDC voltage (pu)
Wind farm frequency(pu)
with two cases. The main grid has been chosen very small 0.996
in order to exaggerate results. A single wind farm will of 0.995
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
course not have significant influence on a large power system. 205
Anyhow, a future constellation of many large wind farms con- 200
nected to a large power system might show similar behavior 195
Wind farm power (MW)
Power (MW)

as the simulated case.

190
TABLE I 185
M AIN PARAMETERS USED IN THE PSCAD MODEL
180
Main grid size 1 GW 175
Wind farm size 3MW x 100 = 300 MW 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Time (s)
Rated frequency of main grid 50 Hz
Rated frequency of wind farm 50 Hz
Wind Speed 12 m/s Fig. 13. Responses with frequency support from the wind farm

1.002
A. Case 1: Operation without frequency support
The wind farm operates without grid frequency support. A 1
load of 25 MW was inserted to the main grid at t = 0 s. The
Main grid frequency (pu)

resulting plots are shown in Fig. 12. 0.998

Wthout frequency
B. Case 2: Operation with frequency support by the wind farm 0.996 support from the wind farm
Wth frequency
In the second case the droop controllers were implement support from the wind farm

for artificial frequency coupling and hence with main grid 0.994

frequency support. A load of 25 MW was inserted to the main

grid at t = 0 s. The resulting plots are shown in Fig. 13. 0.992
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Time (s)
The frequency response of the main grid in the two simu-
lated cases in compared in Fig. 14. Fig. 14. Comparison of the frequency responses
The comparison of the frequency responses of the two with and without frequency support from the wind farm.
cases in Fig. 14 shows that the dip in frequency is reduced

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 6

considerably when the wind farm participated in main grid

frequency support by the proposed control strategy.

V. C ONCLUSION
Collection grid frequency control of VSC-HVDC connected
wind farm is proposed in this paper for supporting the fre-
quency of the main grid. The control technique uses local
frequency measurement at the collection grid in order to con-
tribute to the main grid frequency support. Artificial frequency
coupling of the collection grid and the main grid was achieved
by implementation of droop controllers. This coupling is used
in the wind farm for droop based frequency support by the
wind turbines.
Simulation results from PSCAD model of VSC-HVDC
connected wind farm showed that the control strategy improves
the main grid frequency response during disturbances.
Power fluctuations and outages within the offshore AC grid
have not been investigated so far. This interesting case will
be addressed in future studies. The way to achieve the needed
power margin can also be optimised and will be adressed in
the future.

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