Coordinated Start-Up Control and Inter-Converter Oscillations Damping for MMC-HVDC Grid

Abstract

Modular multilevel converter (MMC)-based high-voltage direct current (HVDC) grid is a promising technology for multiple offshore wind farms (OWFs) to form interconnected offshore grids. However, in the MMC-HVdc grid, the converter terminals connecting the OWFs could only be passively pre-charged by the ones connecting active ac networks via the dc lines during the start-up process. Under this condition, the start-up process of HVdc grid of the passive-side converters becomes significantly complicated. This paper, considering an HVdc grid integrating multiple passive-side converters, investigates its start-up process with three main contributions: 1) a modified nearest level modulation (NLM) method is proposed for the passive-side converters to mitigate the inrush currents after they are deblocked; 2) based on the dc-side equivalent models, the inter-converter resonances and oscillations between the passive-side converters are analyzed after they are deblocked, and; 3) an oscillation damping controller is proposed to provide the electrical damping of inter-converter oscillations between the passive-side converters. The simulation results in PSCAD/EMTDC from a four-terminal MMC-HVDC grid with two terminals connecting the OWFs verify the effectiveness of the proposed start-up control schemes.

Keywords

• HVDC grid
• modular multilevel converter (MMC)
• start-up control
• inrush currents
• inter-converter oscillations