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ANALYSIS OF POWER/VOLTAGE STABILITY OF RVDC CONVERTERS IN AC SYSTEMS

T Smed G Andersson
Royal I n s t i t u t e of Technology, Sweden

A b s t r a c t . In this paper, a new approach t o analyse
power/voltage stability in ac/dc systems is developed.
The method is based on power flows on a well-established
'quasi steady-state' model and complex system configu-
rations can be analysed. In addition to traditional mea-
sures such as the effective short circuit ratio (ESCR)and
d V / d Q , the smallest singular value of the power flow Ja-
cobian is used and found to be a feasible measure of the
volt age s t ab&ty.
INTRODUCTION
where AQ is the injected, reactive power a t the inverter
commutation bus. G Q is a vector of 5CrO.3, except for one
unity element. G . is the Jacobian of G wrt x, i.e. the
. state variables d V / d Q can then be found as one of the
elements of the vector
At the stability limit, dV/dQ becomes infinite, see [2].
This can only happen if G . is singular.

During the last years, the problems and phenomena re- Receiving System
lated with HUDC converters connected to weak ac sys-
tems have attracted a lot of attention and a substantial The system shown in Fig. 1 has previously been analysed
amount of research has been done in this field, see [l] and in e.g. [l] and [Z].
references therein for an overview of the subject. In or-
der to obtain a basic understanding of the power/voltage
stability and other interactions, a simplified model was
introduced and subsequently used by several authors [l].
A number of stability criteria based on quantities like the
effective short circuit ratio (ESCR), d P d / d I d and d V / d Q
-1
Id
-PdI -
VP
-
VI

were formulated and used in the analysis of the system.

T h e development in this paper is based on the ac/dc
power flow method developed in [3]. The dc-variables are
eliminated and the effects of the dc-link are included as
additional entries in the power flow Jacobian. In effect,
the impact of the dc-link is summarised in a few vari- Figure 1: Model of receiving system.
ables (8Pd/eV, BQd/8V, etc.), which can be computed
analytically once the control mode is specified. When the initial operating point has been found, the short
T h e models used are the same as in [1,2]. T h e difference in term sensitivity to a reactive power injection a t the in-
this paper as compared with earlier studies is in the struc- verter commutation bus can be calculated. Since the dc-
ture of the study system and in the method of analysis variables have been eliminated, the state variables are
rather than in the models of the components. The system AX = [A61
shown in Fig. 4 is studied in addition to the traditional
and
study system shown in Fig. 1.
G. is a 2x2 matrix for this case.
ANALYSIS The short circuit ratio is defined as:

T h e problem will b e analysed with power flows. T h e nor-

mal ac power flow equations are valid, except t h a t the
SCR = z-' (3)

mismatch equations a t the converter terminal buses are z

where is the ThCvenin impedance in Fig. 1. The effec-
modified. m,
tive short circuit ratio, is the effective admittance
First, a power flow solution is obtained where the voltages seen from the inverter commutation bus. i.e.
a t the converters are specified in order to get an initial o p
__
crating point and then the short term effect of a reactive ESCR = z-'
+ jB,h = SCR + 3B.h
power injection a t the inverter commutation bus is anal-
ysed. Let G = 0 denote the mismatch equations. For a
The critical ESCR, CESCR, is the value of ESCR, for
small reactive power injection a t the inverter commuta-
tion bua which det(G.) = 0, see [Z].
If & is neglected, the computations are simplified and
it can be shown that
 396

det(G.) = ESCR' + Q. ESCR - Q i j - PdI +

PdIPv + QdIQ.
6
with Q. = VaBQdr and P. = Va-a P d I
8 Va a va
det(G.) = 0 is obtained when 5

5 2
CESCR
1

-1

-2
0 1 2 3 4

Figure 3: (dV/dQ)-' vs ESCR, Explanation of no-

tation in text.
The Singular Value Decomposition

Before we analyse the configuration including the sending

network (Fig. 4), it is appropriate to describe the tool we
QV will use for this analysis, i.e. the singular value decom-
-1
-1. position (41, which has been used for analysis of voltage
-4 -2 0 2 stability in a.c. systems [SI, and refs. therein. Any real n
by n matrix, A, can be written as

Figure 2: CESCR vs Q. with P. = 0. A = UXVT

NOW when the importance of P . and Q. have been e s t a b
lished, it is obvious that d V , / d Q depends on the control
mode of the d.c. link.
T h e following control modes are analyzed:
(i) constant current, current control in rectifier (I,)
(ii) constant power, current control in rectifier (P,)
(i) constant current, current control in inverter ( I , )
(iv) constant power, current control in inverter ( P a )
P. and Q. can now easily be calculated by the method
of [3], a n d d V , / d Q can be calculated from eq. (2). In
figure 3 (dK/dQ)-' is plotted as function of ESCR for
t h e different control modes above. A large positive value
of (dK/dQ)-' indicates a stable system and a negative
value a n unstable system. A s m d l positive value indi-
cates a voltage sensitive system close to the stability limit.
From figure 3 it can be concluded that current control in
t h e inverter ia the most stable control mode. For current
control in the rectifier constant current control is the more
stable mode.
where U is an n by n orthonormal matrix, V is an n by n
orthonormal matrix, and C is an n by n diagonal matrix,
C = diag(o1, ...un), with ui 2 0 for all i. The numbers
u 2 ...un 2 0.
{ u i } are normally ordered such that U I 2 '
The minimum singular value un is the distance, measured
in matrix two-norm, between A and the nearest singular
matrix, i.e. the matrix with det A = 0 including the effect
of the sending end system.
It is illustrative to consider the singular value decom-
position of the Jacobian for the configuration shown in
Fig. 4. Assume that the sending end system has a con-
stant ESCR = 6.0 and the receiving end system has an
ESCR = 3.0 in the first case and ESCR = 1.6 in the
second case. The data from the example above are used
and the P y control mode is assumed.
ESCFk3.O gives min(u) = 1.4040, while ESCFk1.6 gives
min(u) = 0.0840. It can be shown that for a small min(u),
IdV,/dQI is proportional to (min(u))-' and the sign equal
to qn(uTv4).
 397
Figure 4: Model of sending and receiving system.
Figure 5 : u4 sgn(ufv4) vs ESCR.
In general, t h e last column of U indicates the the most
critical disturbance, the laat column of V indicates how
t h e state variables will change due t o the disturbance, and
UT' indicates the sise of t h e change in the state variables.
In t h e example, a reactive power injection at the inverter
end waa the most critical dirturbance.
In Fig. 5, the smallest singular value multiplied by
~ g n ( u ~ v is , ) plotted VI E S C R in the inverter. Note
t h a t t h e curve for mode P u and mode l a has a 'knee'
at ESCR z 3. Thia indicates that the smallest singu-
lar value is associated to the rectifier end for ESCR > 3.
Also note, t h a t whereas the curves for P a and l a are close
to each other for small ESCRr, they are well separated
for large values of ESCRI. This is due to the fact that
they a r e equally stable for instabilities a t the inverter, but
l a is more stable than PQ for instabilities at the rectifier.
It can also be seen in the diagram that instabilities a t
the inverter dominate for the whole interval [0.5 4.51 for
the control modes with constant 7 ( P 7 and 17). To sum-
m a r k , Fig. 5 contains information on instabilities a t both
the rectifier and inverter end whereas Fig. 3 only contains
information on the stability a t the inverter end.
CONCLUSIONS
The power/voltage stability for ac/dc systems has been
investigated. Several measures such as ESCR, dV/dQ
and the minimum singular value were used and related to
each other.
A model including only the receiving system was analysed
and it was found that the sensitivity of active and reactive
power consumption wrt changes in a c voltage (P.,Q.)
are important factors, particularly Q.. Current control
in the inverter was found to be more stable. It was also
shown that the strength of the sending end system has an
influence on the stability only when current control is in
the rectifier.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Financial support from ABB Power Systems and Vatten-
fall is -gratefully acknowledged. The authors wish to sin-
cerely thank Magnus Olotrson for skilful help with LA-
TEX.
References
[l] Gavrilovic A, et. al.: "Aspects of ac/dc System In-
teraction: Peak Available Power, Second Harmonic
Resonance, Low Inertia Systems, Controllability of
HVDC", Montech -86, Montreal, Canada (1986).
[Z] FrankCn B and Andersson G: "Analysis of HVDC
Converters connected t o Weak ac Systems", IEEE
Transactions on Power Systems, vol. 5, No 1 (1990),
pp 235-242.
[3] Smed T, Andersson G, SheblC G.B and Grigsby L.L:
"A New Approach to ac/dc Power Flow", paper
90 SM 399-6 P W R S IEEE Summer Power Meeting,
Minneapolis, Minn., USA, 1990.
[4] Lawson C.L and Hanson R.J: "Solving Least
Squares Problems", Prentice Hall (1974).
[5] LBf P.A. et al, "Fast Calculation of a Volt-
age Stability Index", Paper 9 1 W M 203-&PWRS,
IEEE Winter Meeting 1991, New York, USA.