2164

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,

0885-8977/$26.00 2010 IEEE

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

2165

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. 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

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 (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

2166

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) 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 (10)
Fig. 3. Circuit diagram of a MV three-phase converter circuit using two resonant inductors on the LV side.

(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 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 maxV. WIND FARM DC GRID DESIGN

(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.

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,

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

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.

2168

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

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 (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 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)

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

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

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)

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

2169

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

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-

2170

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

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.

(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 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

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

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.

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

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)

2172

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.

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]

(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

(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 (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 REFERENCES [1] P. Bresesti, W. Kling, R. Hendriks, and R. Vailati, HVDC connection of offshore wind farms to the transmission system, IEEE Trans. Energy Convers., vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 3743, Mar. 2007. [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., vol. 43, no. 6, pp. 14751482, Nov./Dec. 2007. [4] D. Jovcic, Step-up DC-DC converter for megawatt size applications, Inst. Eng. Technol. Power Electron., vol. 2, pp. 675685, Nov. 2009. [5] A. Faulstich, J. Stinke, and F. Wittwer, Medium voltage converter for permanent magnet wind power generators up to 5 MW, in Proc. Eur. Conf. Power Electronics and Applications, 2005, pp. 19. [6] M. Chinchilla, S. Arnaltes, and J. Burgos, Control of permanent-magnet generators applied to variable-speed wind-energy systems connected to the grid, IEEE Trans. Energy Convers., vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 130135, Mar. 2006. [7] N. Mohan, T. Undeland, and W. Robbins, Power ElectronicsConverters, Applications, and Design. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley , 2003, pp. 103111, 200297. [8] J. Robinson, D. Jovcic, and G. Joos, 3-Phase step-up resonant DC-DC converter for medium power applications, presented at the Electr. Power Energy Conf., Montral, QC, Canada, 2009. [9] B. Wu, High-Power Converters and AC Drives. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2006, pp. 1733. [10] A. D. Hansen and G. Michalke, Modelling and control of variablespeed multi-pole permanent magnet synchronous generator wind turbine, Wind Energy, pp. 537554, May 2008.

[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.

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.