One of four PNRA scholarships available in 2008/09:
PhD research at Imperial College London - system impacts and opportunities of HVDC upgrades
The project objective is to establish how, and by how much, the transmission system capacity might be improved through a series of DC upgrades and expansions. This can range from a single line to the development of a DC network inset within an AC network and encompasses not just the thermal capacity increase of a line but also how the converter stations can provide optimised power flow and extension of stability limits.
The stability limit of the existing network would be established and compared to the single-route upgrade including damping provision using modulation of either the real or reactive powers. Benefits of additional upgrades in terms of increased stability limit will be explored. The impact of line outages on the stability would be assessed using various controller design methods that have previously been used for robust control of damping from SVCs using wide-area feedback.
Besides traditional end-to-end HVDC link, use of multi-terminal systems with modularised switched converters will be investigated for greater control over the routing of power in the AC network and an extra degree of freedom in system optimisation. The control algorithms for the converters will be tested in real-time using the hardware-in-loop simulation facility at Imperial.
A comparison of system dynamic performance with enhanced power transfer levels would be carried out where each cross-boundary route is an independent end-to-end DC link set against a case of AC lines equipped with Quadrature Boosters and/or SVCs.
I WANT TO:
Power Networks Research Academy
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