General and Unified Model of the Power Flow Problem in Multiterminal AC/DC Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive unified power flow model for multiterminal hybrid AC/DC networks, enabling more realistic control, improved computational efficiency, and applicability under unbalanced conditions.

Contribution

It extends the standard AC power flow model to include DC buses and multiple control modes, allowing simultaneous regulation of DC voltage and enhanced operational flexibility.

Findings

Allows multiple ICs to regulate DC voltage simultaneously

Achieves tenfold computational speed-up over existing methods

Supports unbalanced conditions and negative sequence power injection

Abstract

This paper proposes a generic and unified model of the power flow (PF) problem for multiterminal hybrid AC/DC networks. The proposed model is an extension of the standard AC-PF. The DC network is treated as an AC one and, in addition to the Slack, PV and PQ nodes, four new node types are introduced to model the DC buses and the buses connecting the AC/DC interfacing converters (IC). The unified model is solved using the Newton-Raphson method. The extended PF equations can be used in the presence of multiple ICs operating under different control modes. Compared to other recent works, the proposed method allows multiple ICs to regulate the DC voltage simultaneously. This corresponds to more realistic operational conditions that ensure redundancy and allow for more flexible control of the hybrid grid. The proposed model can be used for networks under unbalanced conditions and allows for an intentionally negative sequence power injection. In addition to the operational advantages of this method, it is shown that the computational performance of the proposed method is one order of magnitude better than that of other methods presented in the existing recent literature while having the same accuracy.