Grid-Forming Control Methods for Weakly Connected Offshore WPPs

TL;DR

This paper reviews and compares various grid-forming control methods for weakly-connected offshore wind power plants, focusing on stability and applicability during large disturbances, highlighting challenges and prerequisites for their implementation.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive comparison of GFCs for offshore WPPs, emphasizing stability and operational challenges in weak-grid conditions.

Findings

Different GFCs exhibit varied stability properties in weak-grid conditions

Some GFCs are more suitable for islanded operation and black start

Weak-grid connection poses significant stability challenges for GFCs

Abstract

Grid-forming control (GFC) has seen numerous technological advances in their control types, applications, and the multitude of services they provide. Some examples of the services they provide include black start, inertial frequency response, and islanded operation capabilities with the possibility of re-synchronization without the need of additional support from other devices such as storage. State of the art literature proposes a variety of GFCs which can provide single or multiple of these services. However, study of these different GFCs for weakly-connected offshore wind power plants (WPPs) based on time-domain simulation and focusing on the large signal disturbance is not well covered. This paper reviews some of the most researched grid-forming control methods applicable to offshore WPPs and provides a comparative investigation and discussion of their stability properties and applicability, especially when connected to a weak-grid. The paper also provides a discussion on the prerequisites and challenges surrounding the comparative study of different GFCs.