Selective harmonic elimination–pulsewidth modulation (SHE–PWM) is a modulation technique widely used to improve the efficiency and harmonic content in medium-voltage high-power converters. Among these converters, the three-level neutral-point-clamped (3L-NPC) converter is one of the most utilized topologies. However, the 3L-NPC converter requires a proper balancing of dc-link capacitor voltages. This article presents a control technique, based on pulse shifting method, to regulate the neutral point voltage when SHE-PWM is utilized. The proposed technique performs well with any power factor and it can also be directly applied to T-type converters and easily extrapolated to other multilevel topologies. The proposed method is experimentally validated in a scaled-down power converter and a full-scale medium-voltage 3L-NPC converter.

It is getting more common every day to install inverters that offer several grid support services in parallel. As these services are provided, a simultaneous need arises to know the combined limit of the inverter for those services. In the present paper, operational limits are addressed based on a utility scale for a real inverter scenario with an energy storage system (ESS) (1.5 MW). The paper begins by explaining how active and reactive power limits are calculated, illustrating the PQ maps depending on the converter rated current and voltage. Then, the effect of the negative sequence injection, the phase shift of compensated harmonics and the transformer de-rating are introduced step-by-step. Finally, inverter limits for active filter applications are summarized, to finally estimate active and reactive power limits along with the harmonic current injection for some example cases. The results show that while the phase shift of the injected negative sequence has a significant effect in the available inverter current, this is not the case for the phase shift of injected harmonics. However, the amplitude of the injected negative sequence and harmonics will directly impact the power capabilities of the inverter and therefore, depending on the grid-side voltage, it might be interesting to design an output transformer with a different de-rating factor to increase the power capabilities.

With an increasing capacity of inverter-based generation and with a 100% renewable energy power system on the horizon, grid forming converters have the potential to become the prevalent control mode in the grid. Thus, the correct performance of these devices is going to be crucial for system stability and security of supply. Most research related to the grid-forming control is focused on normal operating conditions, although significant effort has been devoted to current limitation strategies to ensure Low Voltage Ride Through (LVRT) capability. However, most contributions usually consider only balanced faults. This paper, proposes a new current limiting method based on the well-known threshold virtual impedance (TVI) that keeps the voltage source behaviour associated to the grid forming (GFM) capability, even when the current limit is reached, while reducing the voltage unbalance according to user-defined settings.

In this paper, a Frequency-Dependent Pi Model (FDPi) of a three-core submarine cable is presented. The model is intended to be used for the representation of submarine cables in an Offshore Wind Power Plant (OWPP) scenario for both time and frequency domain analysis. The frequency-dependent variation of each conductive layer is modeled by a Foster equivalent network whose parameters are tuned by means of Vector Fitting (VF) algorithm. The complete formulation for the parameterization of the model is presented in detail, which allows an easy reproduction of the presented model. The validation of the model is performed via a comparison with a well-established reference model, the Universal Line Model (ULM) from PSCAD/EMTDC software. Two cable system case studies are presented. The first case study shows the response of the FDPi Model for a three-core submarine cable. On the other hand, the second case study depicts the response of three single-core underground cables laying in trefoil formation. This last case shows the applicability of the FDPi Model to other types of cable systems and indirectly validates the response of the aforementioned model with experimental results. Additionally, potential applications of the FDPi model are presented.

Evaluation of the Frequency Response of AC Transmission Based Offshore Wind Farms | InTechOpen, Published on: 2011-07-28. Authors: Markel Zubiaga, Gonzalo Abad, Jon Andoni Barrena, et