Event-Triggered Non-Linear Control of Offshore MMC Grids for Asymmetrical AC Faults

TL;DR

This paper introduces an event-triggered non-linear control strategy for offshore MMC-HVDC grids to effectively manage asymmetrical AC faults, improving system stability and response time compared to traditional PI control.

Contribution

It proposes a novel event-triggered control method using super-twisted sliding mode control for offshore MMC-HVDC systems facing asymmetrical AC faults, enhancing transient response.

Findings

STSMC achieves quicker convergence than PI control.

Event-triggered control reduces unnecessary control actions.

Simulation validates improved stability during offshore faults.

Abstract

Fault ride-through capability studies of MMC-HVDC connected wind power plants have focused primarily on the DC link and onshore AC grid faults. Offshore AC faults, mainly asymmetrical faults have not gained much attention in the literature despite being included in the future development at national levels in the ENTSO-E HVDC code. The proposed work gives an event-triggered control to stabilize the system once the offshore AC fault has occurred, identified, and isolated. Different types of control actions such as proportional-integral (PI) controller and super-twisted sliding mode control (STSMC) are used to smoothly transition the post-fault system to a new steady state operating point by suppressing the negative sequence control. Initially, the effect of a negative sequence current control scheme on the transient behavior of the power system with a PI controller is discussed in this paper. Further, a non-linear control strategy (STSMC) is proposed which gives quicker convergence of the system post-fault in comparison to PI control action. These post-fault control operations are only triggered in the presence of a fault in the system, i.e., they are event-triggered. The validity of the proposed strategy is demonstrated by simulation on a $\pm$525 kV, three-terminal meshed MMC-HVDC system model in Real Time Digital Simulator (RTDS).