In this thesis, an evaluation of the existing control system for ABB: s HVDC Classic Links is performed in order to investigate whether a possible improvement to commutation failure prediction is possible and to be recommended. The thesis starts with a theoretical approach to the complexity of consequences of increasing the extinction angle (γ) in order to prevent commutation failure in inverter operation, which is later confirmed through using the simulation software PSCAD to evaluate coherence between simulation results and theory. Dynamic power studies are performed through simulations in the electromagnetic time domain transient tool PSCAD in order to establish a possible improvement to the existing commutation failure prediction today used in ABB control systems for HVDC applications.

Power system maintenance optimisation involves obtaining the minimum total costs, including preventive and corrective maintenance costs and the cost of failures for both supplier and customer. To calculate the cost of failure, information is needed about the equipment reliability characteristics. It is also necessary to know how maintenance affects component reliability. The aim of the work leading up to this thesis has been to develop reliability models that include the effect of maintenance. Three case studies have been carried out for different types of power system components using three distinct methods. In the first study the reliability of the first generation XLPE cables was modelled with respect to failures caused by water treeing using load-strength modelling. The model was based on assumptions of the ageing process and the distribution system characteristics. This study showed that it is possible to and overvoltage and insulation characteristics that can be fitted to agree with failure statistics for water tree ageing in XLPE cables. The second case study included a study of all circuit breaker failures in the Swedish transmission grid during the period from 1 January 1999 to 30 June 2003. In a subsequent investigation a method to combine information from the design process with maintenance records and failure statistics was employed using Bayesian methods. The resulting reliability model is continuously updated as more failure and maintenance data becomes available. This case study showed that it is possible to develop reliability models for components that have not yet failed by utilising information from the design process and right-censored observations from inspections. Finally, in the third case study a quantitative method for establishing the condition of disconnector contacts by the use of thermography was developed. Two sets of measurements on disconnector contacts in the Swedish transmission grid were carried out to establish the accuracy of the method. By utilising the results from the measurements estimates of the statistical distributions of the error sources were produced. The results from the case studies show that the lack of detailed, high-quality data remains a critical problem when modelling reliability of power system equipment, even when using methods that require a minimum of data. / QC 20101209

This master thesis explores the application of Pumped-Storage Hydroelectricity (PSH) within an electricity market characterised by a substantial share of renewable and intermittent electricity production. The purpose of PSH is to enhance the alignment of supply with demand by storing energy at electricity surplus and releasing it during shortage. The Juktan Power Station, once the largest pumped hydro storage facility in Sweden with a storage capacity of about 25 GWh and maximum generation of 335 MW, serves as a case study. An in-depth analysis of the properties of the Swedish electricity market and its influencing factors is conducted. Wind speed data is successfully used to increase accuracy of price prediction. Furthermore, a model is developed to calculate potential profitability employing various operation methods. In conclusion, large-scale PSH provide significant benefit to the stability of the electricity system with a clear increase in value after 2020. However, concerns about grid tariff design, electricity market development and energy storage incentives means that investments are not obviously profitable. / Detta examensarbete utforskar tillämpningen av pumpkraftverk på en modern elmarknad med betydande andel förnyelsebar och intermittent electricitetsproduktion. Syftet med pumpkraft är att förbättra anpassningen av tillgång och efterfrågan genom att lagra energi vid elöverskott och frigöra den vid underskott. Juktan Kraftstation, tidigare Sveriges största pumpkraftverk med en lagringskapacitet på ca 25 GWh och maximal generatoreffekt på 335 MW, används som fallstudie. En analys av den svenska elmarknaden och dess påverkande faktorer genomförs. Vindhastighetsdata används framgångsrikt för att förbättra träffsäkerheten för elprisförutsägelser. Vidare utvecklas en modell för att beräkna potentiell lönsamhet med olika driftmetoder. Sammanfattningsvis visas att storskalig pumpkraft ger betydande fördelar för elsystemet med tydlig förstärkning efter 2020. Däremot identifieras potentiella problem såsom elnätsavgiften, svårigheten att långsiktigt förutspå elmarknadens utveckling samt incitament för energilagring, vilka sammantaget gör att pumpkraftinvesteringar inte är självklart lönsamma.

<p>This doctoral thesis presents new ideas and research results on control of marine electric power system.</p><p>The main motivation for this work is the development of a control system, power management system (PMS) capable to improve the system robustness to blackout, handle major power system faults, minimize the operational cost and keep the power system machinery components under minimal stress in all operational conditions.</p><p>Today, the electric marine power system tends to have more system functionality implemented in integrated automation systems. The present state of the art type of tools and methods for analyzing marine power systems do only to a limited extent utilize the increased knowledge available within each of the mechanical and electrical engineering disciplines.</p><p>As the propulsion system is typically consisted of the largest consumers on the vessel, important interactions exists between the PMS and vessel propulsion system. These are interacted through the dynamic positioning (DP) controller, thrust allocation algorithm, local thruster controllers, generators' local frequency and voltage controllers. The PMS interacts with the propulsion system through the following main functions: available power static load control, load rate limiting control and blackout prevention control (i.e. fast load reduction). These functions serve to prevent the blackout and to ensure that the vessel will always have enough power.</p><p>The PMS interacts with other control systems in order to prevent a blackout and to minimize operational costs. The possibilities to maximize the performance of the vessel, increase the robustness to faults and decrease a component wear-out rate are mainly addressed locally for the individual control systems. The solutions are mainly implicative (for e.g. local thruster control, or DP thrust allocation), and attention has not been given on the interaction between these systems, the power system and PMS. Some of the questions that may arise regarding the system interactions, are as follows: how the PMS functionality may affect a local thruster control, how the local thruster control may affect the power system performance, how some consumers may affect the power system performance in normal operations and thus affect other consumers, how the power system operation may affect the susceptibility to faults and blackout, how various operating and weather conditions may affect the power system performance and thus propulsion performance though the PMS power limiting control, how propulsion performance may affect the overall vessel performance, which kind of faults can be avoided if the control system is re-structured, how to minimize the operational costs and to deal with the conflicting goals. This PhD thesis aims to provide answers to such questions.</p><p>The main contributions of this PhD thesis are:</p><p>− A new observer-based fast load reduction system for the blackout prevention control has been proposed. When compared to the existing fast load reduction systems, the proposed controller gives much faster blackout detection rate, high reliability in the detection and faster and more precise load reduction (within 150 miliseconds).</p><p>− New advanced energy management control strategies for reductions in the operational costs and improved fuel economy of the vessel.</p><p>− Load limiting controllers for the reduction of thruster wear-out rate. These controllers are based on the probability of torque loss, real-time torque loss and the thruster shaft</p><p>accelerations. The controllers provide means of redistributing thrust from load fluctuating thrusters to less load fluctuating ones, and may operate independently of the thrust allocation system. Another solution is also proposed where the load limiting controller based on thrust losses is an integrated part of DP thrust allocation algorithm.</p><p>− A new concept of totally integrated thrust allocation system, local thruster control and power system. These systems are integrated through PMS functionality which is contained within each thruster PLC, thereby distributed among individual controllers, and independent of the communications and dedicated controllers.</p><p>− Observer-based inertial controller and direct torque-loss controller (soft anti-spin controller) with particular attention to the control of machine wear-out rate. These controller contribute to general shaft speed control of electrical thrusters, generators and main propulsion prime movers.</p><p>The proposed controllers, estimators and concepts are demonstrated through time-domain simulations performed in MATLAB/SIMULINK. The selected data are typical for the required applications and may differ slightly for the presented cases.</p>

This doctoral thesis presents new ideas and research results on control of marine electric power system. The main motivation for this work is the development of a control system, power management system (PMS) capable to improve the system robustness to blackout, handle major power system faults, minimize the operational cost and keep the power system machinery components under minimal stress in all operational conditions. Today, the electric marine power system tends to have more system functionality implemented in integrated automation systems. The present state of the art type of tools and methods for analyzing marine power systems do only to a limited extent utilize the increased knowledge available within each of the mechanical and electrical engineering disciplines. As the propulsion system is typically consisted of the largest consumers on the vessel, important interactions exists between the PMS and vessel propulsion system. These are interacted through the dynamic positioning (DP) controller, thrust allocation algorithm, local thruster controllers, generators' local frequency and voltage controllers. The PMS interacts with the propulsion system through the following main functions: available power static load control, load rate limiting control and blackout prevention control (i.e. fast load reduction). These functions serve to prevent the blackout and to ensure that the vessel will always have enough power. The PMS interacts with other control systems in order to prevent a blackout and to minimize operational costs. The possibilities to maximize the performance of the vessel, increase the robustness to faults and decrease a component wear-out rate are mainly addressed locally for the individual control systems. The solutions are mainly implicative (for e.g. local thruster control, or DP thrust allocation), and attention has not been given on the interaction between these systems, the power system and PMS. Some of the questions that may arise regarding the system interactions, are as follows: how the PMS functionality may affect a local thruster control, how the local thruster control may affect the power system performance, how some consumers may affect the power system performance in normal operations and thus affect other consumers, how the power system operation may affect the susceptibility to faults and blackout, how various operating and weather conditions may affect the power system performance and thus propulsion performance though the PMS power limiting control, how propulsion performance may affect the overall vessel performance, which kind of faults can be avoided if the control system is re-structured, how to minimize the operational costs and to deal with the conflicting goals. This PhD thesis aims to provide answers to such questions. The main contributions of this PhD thesis are: − A new observer-based fast load reduction system for the blackout prevention control has been proposed. When compared to the existing fast load reduction systems, the proposed controller gives much faster blackout detection rate, high reliability in the detection and faster and more precise load reduction (within 150 miliseconds). − New advanced energy management control strategies for reductions in the operational costs and improved fuel economy of the vessel. − Load limiting controllers for the reduction of thruster wear-out rate. These controllers are based on the probability of torque loss, real-time torque loss and the thruster shaft accelerations. The controllers provide means of redistributing thrust from load fluctuating thrusters to less load fluctuating ones, and may operate independently of the thrust allocation system. Another solution is also proposed where the load limiting controller based on thrust losses is an integrated part of DP thrust allocation algorithm. − A new concept of totally integrated thrust allocation system, local thruster control and power system. These systems are integrated through PMS functionality which is contained within each thruster PLC, thereby distributed among individual controllers, and independent of the communications and dedicated controllers. − Observer-based inertial controller and direct torque-loss controller (soft anti-spin controller) with particular attention to the control of machine wear-out rate. These controller contribute to general shaft speed control of electrical thrusters, generators and main propulsion prime movers. The proposed controllers, estimators and concepts are demonstrated through time-domain simulations performed in MATLAB/SIMULINK. The selected data are typical for the required applications and may differ slightly for the presented cases.

In this thesis, a new HVDC-based converter system for wind farms is investigated. It is based on a mutually commutated soft-switching converter system and provides a unique integrated solution for the wind turbine generator drive systems, the wind turbine interconnection, and the power conversion for HVDC transmission. In a wind farm, the mutually commutated converter system is a distributed system. A medium-frequency collection grid connects the converter station, equipped with a single-phase voltage source converter and a medium-frequency transmission transformer, with the wind turbines, each containing a cycloconverter and a medium-frequency distribution transformer. In this thesis, various system aspects regarding the application of a distributed mutually commutated converter system in a wind farm are investigated. Special attention is paid to the design of a medium-frequency collection grid that has an acceptable level of transient overvoltages, the design of medium-frequency transformers with suitable magnetic, electric and thermal properties, and the development of a strategy to commutate the voltage source converter during low power generation. In order to adapt the mutually commutated converter system for an application in a wind farm, it had to be further developped. Different carrier-based and space-vector oriented modulation methods have been investigated. It turns out that for any load angle there is a quasi-discontinuous pulse width modulation strategy that can produce the same pulse patterns as space vector modulation. In addition, a modulation strategy has been developed that allows to replace the IGBTs in the cycloconverter with cheap, robust, and reliable fast thyristors, despite their absence of turn-off capability. The feasibility of different modulation strategies for mutually commutated converter systems has been verified on a down-scaled prototype converter system with both IGBT- and thyristor-based cycloconverters. Finally, a feasible wind farm layout is proposed, which considerably reduces the energy generation costs for large winds farms distant to a strong grid connection point. As a consequence, the proposed solution may facilitate the establishment of remotely located wind farms. / QC 20100802

Maximum asset performance is one of the major goals for electric power distribution system operators (DSOs). To reach this goal minimal life cycle cost and maintenance optimization become crucial while meeting demands from customers and regulators. One of the fundamental objectives is therefore to relate maintenance and reliability in an efficient and effective way. Furthermore, this necessitates the determination of the optimal balance between pre¬ventive and corrective maintenance, which is the main problem addressed in the thesis. The balance between preventive and corrective maintenance is approached as a multiobjective optimization problem, with the customer interruption costs on one hand and the maintenance budget of the DSO on the other. Solutions are obtained with meta-heuristics, developed for the specific problem, as well as with an Evolutionary Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm. The methods deliver a Pareto border, a set of several solutions, which the operator can choose between, depending on preferences. The optimization is built on component reliability importance indices, developed specifically for power systems. One vital aspect of the indices is that they work with several supply and load points simultaneously, addressing the multistate-reliability of power systems. For the computation of the indices both analytical and simulation based techniques are used. The indices constitute the connection between component reliability performance and system performance and so enable the maintenance optimization. The developed methods have been tested and improved in two case studies, based on real systems and data, proving the methods’ usefulness and showing that they are ready to be applied to power distribution systems. It is in addition noted that the methods could, with some modifications, be applied to other types of infrastructures. However, in order to perform the optimization, a reliability model of the studied power system is required, as well as estimates on effects of maintenance actions (changes in failure rate) and their related costs. Given this, a generally decreased level of total maintenance cost and a better system reliability performance can be given to the DSO and customers respectively. This is achieved by focusing the preventive maintenance to components with a high potential for improvement from system perspective. / QC 20100810

Static synchronous compensation (StatCom) is an application that utilizes a voltage source converter (VSC) to provide instantaneous reactive power support to the connected power system. Conventionally, StatComs are employed for reactive power support only. However, with the integration of energy storage (ES) into a StatCom, it can provide active power support in addition to the reactive power support. This thesis deals with the integration of ES into StatComs. The investigation involves the following aspects: possible benefits for power systems, main circuit design, and control strategies. As the basis of the investigation, a control scheme is proposed for two-level VSCs. It is a novel flux modulation scheme combined with the well-known deadbeat current control. The current controller is capable of controlling the positive sequence, the negative sequence, and the offset components of the converter current. With flux modulation, all the three above-mentioned components of the bus flux are controllable. This differs from the conventional voltage modulation scheme, in which only the positive and negative sequence components of the bus voltage are controllable. The difference between the proposed flux modulation scheme and the voltage modulation scheme is investigated regarding saturation of transformers in the connected system during fault recovery. The investigation shows that by controlling the offset component of the bus flux, the transformer saturation problem can be mitigated to a certain extent. The possible benefits of the additional active power support of StatComs are investigated through several case studies. Different active power compensation schemes are proposed. First, active power compensation for sudden load changes in weak systems is investigated. The proposed control strategies are verified through computer simulations and through experiments in a real-time simulator. It is shown that with active power compensation, both the phase jumps and magnitude variations in the voltage at the PCC can be reduced significantly. Secondly, the power compensation of cyclic loads is investigated. The results show that the power quality at the connection point can be improved regarding both phase jumps and magnitude variations. In the third case study, the fault-recovery performance of an example system is investigated, showing that improved performance can be achieved by the additional active power support. ES devices such as capacitors, supercapacitors, and batteries exhibit considerable variation in the terminal voltage during a charging/discharging cycle. A direct connection of ES devices to the dc side of a VSC requires a higher voltage rating of the VSC. Thus, the cost of the VSC has to be increased. In this thesis, a dual thyristor converter topology is proposed to interface ES devices with the dc side of the VSC. First, a cost comparison is performed to compare the total cost of the whole system with and without the proposed interface topology. A cost comparison between various types of ES is also presented, providing a guideline for the choice of ES at energy levels where several alternatives exist. Then, the dynamics of systems with the proposed interface topology are investigated. Control strategies are proposed and verified by computer simulations. Two different control methods for the dual-thyristor converter are compared. / QC 20100819

<p>In this thesis, controllers for power oscillation damping, transient stability improvement and power flow control by means of a Controlled Series Compensator (CSC) and and a Dynamic Power Flow Controller (DPFC) are proposed. These devices belong to the group of power system components referred to as Flexible AC Transmission System (FACTS) devices. The developed controllers use only quantities measured locally at the FACTS device as inputs, thereby avoiding the risk of interrupted communications associated with the use of remote signals for control.</p><p>For power systems with one dominating, poorly damped inter-area power oscillation mode, it is shown that a simple generic system model can be used as a basis for damping- and power flow control design. The model for control of CSC includes two synchronous machine models representing the two grid areas participating in the oscillation and three reactance variables, representing the interconnecting transmission lines and the FACTS device. The model for control of DPFC is of the same type but it also includes the phase shift of the internal phase-shifting transformer of the DPFC.</p><p>The key parameters of the generic grid models are adaptively set during the controller operation by estimation from the step responses in the FACTS line power to the changes in the line series reactance inserted by the FACTS device. The power oscillation damping controller is based on a time-discrete, non-linear approach which aims to damp the power oscillations and set the desired power flow on the FACTS line by means of two step changes in the line reactance separated in time by half an oscillation cycle.</p><p>A verification of the proposed controllers was done by means of digital simulations using power system models of different complexities. The CSC and DPFC controllers were shown to significantly improve the small-signal- and transient stability in one four-machine system of a type commonly used to study inter-area oscillations. The CSC controller was also tested for 18 different contingencies in a 23-machine system, resulting in an improvement in both the system transient stability and the damping of the critical oscillation mode. </p>

<p>The Swedish electricity market was de-regulated in 1996, followed by new laws and a new regulation applied to the natural monopolies of electrical distribution systems (EDS). These circumstances have motivated distribution systems operators (DSOs) to introduce more comprehensive analysis methods. The laws, the regulation and additional incentives have been investigated within this work and results from this study can be valuable when developing risk methods or other quantitative methods applied to EDS. This tendency is not unique for Sweden, the results from a comparative study of customer outage compensation laws between Sweden and UK is for example included.</p><p>As a part of investigating these incentives, studies of the Swedish regulation of customer network tariffs have been performed which provide valuable learning when developing regulation models in different countries. The Swedish regulatory model, referred to as the Network Performance Assessment Model (NPAM), was created for one of the first de-regulated electricity markets in the world and has a unique and novel approach. For the first time, an overall presentation of the NPAM has been performed including description of the underlying theory as a part of this work. However, the model has been met by difficulties and the future usage of the model is uncertain. Furthermore, the robustness of the NPAM has been evaluated in two studies with the main conclusion that the NPAM is sensitive toward small variations in input data. Results from these studies are explained theoretically investigating algorithms of the NPAM.</p><p>A pre-study of a project on developing international test systems is presented and this ongoing project aims to be a useful input when developing risk methods. An application study is included with the approach to systematically describe the overall risk management process at a DSO including an evaluation and ideas of future developments. The main objective is to support DSOs in the development of risk management, and to give academic reference material to utilize industry experience. An idea of a risk management classification has been concluded from this application study. The study provides an input to the final objective of a quantitative risk method.</p>