1342 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 34, NO.

2, MARCH 2019

Reliability-Oriented Networking Planning

for Meshed VSC-HVDC Grids
Haipeng Xie , Student Member, IEEE, Zhaohong Bie , Senior Member, IEEE, and Gengfeng Li , Member, IEEE

Abstract—This paper proposes a reliability-oriented planning Superscripts and subscripts

method to design reliable topologies for meshed high-voltage
direct-current (HVdc) grids. Based on the proposed steady-state
·max Tag for upper bounds.
model for HVdc grids, a bi-level and multiobjective planning ·min Tag for lower bounds.
problem is formulated. The optimization model not only regards ·l Tag for transmission lines.
reliability as an independent objective, but also takes the power ·c Tag for DC/DC converters.
flow controllers (PFCs) into account. Compared with conventional ·f Tag for PFCs.
methods, it overcomes the curse of dimensionality and solves
the optimal allocation of PFCs. Then, the nondominated sorting Parameters
genetic algorithm II is employed to solve the upper-level problem. g The conductance of a branch.
For lower-level problems, an algorithm based on minimum
spanning trees is proposed to optimally allocate PFCs, and
r Constant parameter for a variable resistor.
an improved least frequently used cache algorithm and an γ Linear parameter for a variable resistor.
optimum-test algorithm are developed to promote the computing A Constant parameter for investment.
efficiency of reliability evaluation. The European Supergrid and a B Linear parameter for investment.
Chinese ultra-HVdc system are adopted as test systems to validate ng The number of connected (sub)grids.
the proposed method. Case studies prove that the proposed
method provides an effective tool for the planning of HVdc grids.
η The vector of economic loss per unit shedding.
Also, results show that the cache technique and the optimum-test P ld The vector of power demands at buses.
algorithm can reduce more than 70% of the total elapsed time. pd The probability of contingency d.
Index Terms—HVDC grid, networking planning, reliability eval- pfijr The forced outage rate of branch (i, j).
uation, power flow controller, cache algorithm, multi-objective τ The attenuation coefficient.
optimization, expansion planning. Variables
NOMENCLATURE D The current ratio for a converter or PFC.
x The position variable for a variable resistor.
Sets and indices Ii The current injected into bus i.
i, j Indices for buses. Iij The current through branch (i, j).
s Index for schemes. G The matrix of equivalent conductance.
d Index for fault cases. I The vector of branch currents.
k Index for subgrids. P The vector of branch currents.
G Tuple for the topology of the grid. V The vector of nodal voltages.
N The set of nodes/buses. P gn The vector of net injected power at buses.
L The set of branches. P shd The vector of nodal load shedding/curtailment.
S The set of candidate schemes. ENSd ENS per year in case d.
Ds The set of fault cases in scheme s. ENSd,k EENS of subgrid k in fault case d .
Ls The set of branches in scheme s. ν Prior factor of a subgrid.
Functions and operators
Manuscript received March 19, 2018; revised July 23, 2018 and September C(·) The investment function.
12, 2018; accepted October 19, 2018. Date of publication October 29, 2018;
date of current version February 18, 2019. This work was supported in part by R(·) The reliability metric function.
the National Key Research and Development Program of China under Grant Abbreviations
2016YFB0901900 and in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of
China under Grant 51637008. Paper no. TPWRS-00402-2018. (Corresponding PFC Power flow controller.
author: Zhaohong Bie.) OLS Optimal load shedding.
The authors are with the State Key Laboratory of Electrical Insulation and
Power Equipment and Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Smart Grid, Xi’an Jiao- FOR Forced outage rate.
tong University, Xi’an 710049, China (e-mail:, xiehaipeng@stu.xjtu.edu.cn; ENS Energy not supplied.
zhbie@mail.xjtu.edu.cn; gengfengli@mail.xjtu.edu.cn). EENS Expected Energy not supplied.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Other symbols and abbreviations are defined as required in
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRS.2018.2878480 the text.

0885-8950 © 2018 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

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XIE et al.: RELIABILITY-ORIENTED NETWORKING PLANNING FOR MESHED VSC-HVDC GRIDS
I. INTRODUCTION
IGH-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission systems
H are supposed to be an appealing solution to transmit bulk
power in a long distance or under submarine conditions [1].
An HVDC grid based on voltage source converter (VSC) tech-
nology can further provide a wide range of technical benefits,
such as promoting the reliability and flexibility attributed to
the flexible control mode [2], [3]. Driven by these benefits, the
Supergrid, a European overlay HVDC grid, has been proposed
and discussed [4]. Although no concrete framework of the huge
project can be seen till now, the idea of Supergrid has greatly
promoted the research and development (R&D) of HVDC grids.
In China, the first meshed HVDC grid will be in commission in
2018, having 4 buses at ±500 kV [3].
The International Council on Large Electric Systems
(CIGRE) has devoted to R&D of HVDC grids, Study Committee
B4 of which has launched a series of work groups concerning
modeling, design, control and etc. [5] The European HVDC
Grid Study Group presented a list of technical guidelines for
HVDC grids [6]. Moreover, HVDC grids are demonstrated in
the lab by S. Amamra et al. [7]. In the academic community,
plentiful studies have been conducted on HVDC grids. These
studies usually focus on particular areas of the technique, in-
cluding control [8]–[12], protection and grounding [13]–[16],
security [17], operation and steady models [18]–[20], and reli-
ability [21], [22]. Industrial circles are almost prepared for the
birth of the first meshed HVDC grid, as core devices are devel-
oped rapidly, including DC/DC converters, DC current break-
ers, DC cables and DC power flow controllers (PFCs) [3]. These
studies and demonstration projects largely promote the R&D of
HVDC grids, promising a bright future for HVDC grids.
However, how to design an optimal topology for HVDC grids
has been rarely investigated. Among the few studies on planning,
essential issues on the planning of HVDC grids were addressed
in [23]. Although some examples were also presented in the
book, no complete solution was proposed. S. Torbaghan et al.
presented a dynamic planning method to construct a meshed
offshore HVDC grid to maximize the profits [24], with financial
and power-market factors considered. However, the reliability
or security of HVDC grids was not taken into account. S. Weck
et al. proposed a novel planning method, in which the load rat-
ing and N-1 security were checked [25], [26]. Its downside is
the curse of dimensionality as the number of buses increases.
CIGRE Technical Brochure 713 describes essential elements to
design a reliable HVDC grid [27], but a general design algo-
rithm and a probabilistic reliability evaluation method are ab-
sent. Moreover, existing studies usually ignored the allocation
of PFCs which is essential to ensure the flexibility of HVDC
grids. Although a wide range of planning methods have been
proposed to expand AC transmission systems, these methods
cannot be transplanted into the planning of HVDC grids di-
rectly because of the significant differences between AC grids
and HVDC grids.
This paper focuses on the reliability-oriented networking
planning of HVDC grids, with PFCs considered. Compared
with expansion, the term networking here emphasizes how to
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1343
construct an HVDC grid from 2-terminal or multi-terminal
HVDC systems that are not directly connected with DC links.
In this topic, the reliability evaluation of the grid is one of
the key issues. As mentioned above, the improvement of
reliability is one of the prominent advantages of HVDC grids.
The investment to network an HVDC grid, however, is so huge
that it is unrealistic to satisfy the N-1 security constraint in the
primary stage of the construction. So we regard reliability as an
objective rather than a constraint to exploit more on reliability.
The reliability evaluation of a meshed network is generally
time-consuming because an enormous number of optimization
problems are to be solved to redispatch the grid after outages.
The problem goes even more intractable after the reliability
evaluation is embedded into optimization. The siting of PFCs is
another issue to explore. In order to ensure operation flexibility
and fault isolation, PFCs are essential for a meshed HVDC grid.
However, no general algorithm has been proposed to allocate
these PFCs in a meshed HVDC grid.
Aiming at preceding problems and difficulties, this paper
proposes a multi-objective planning method to network or ex-
pand HVDC grids. First, HVDC grids are modeled, concerning
transmission lines, DC/DC converters and PFCs. Then a multi-
objective optimization model is proposed to find optimal plans
to network an economical and reliable HVDC grid, which is
solved based on the nondominated sorting genetic algorithm II
(NSGA-II). From the aspect of adequacy, reliability is estimated
by conducting the N-1 fault case analysis.
The contributions of the paper include 1) a bi-level & multi-
objective reliability-oriented planning model for HVDC grids,
2) an allocation algorithm for PFCs based on searching mini-
mum spanning trees, and 3) a cache algorithm and an optimum-
test algorithm to promote the efficiency of reliability evaluation.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. HVDC grids
are modeled in Section II. Section III formulates the proposed
planning model. Methods to solve the proposed planning prob-
lem and corresponding acceleration algorithms are presented in
Section IV. In Section V, two numerical test systems are used to
investigate the performance of proposed methods. Conclusions
are summarized in Section VI.
II. STEADY-STATE MODEL FOR HVDC GRIDS
The topology of an HVDC grid is represented by an undi-
rected graph G := (N , L). N denotes the set of nodes. A con-
verter station is modeled as a node in HVDC grids, including
switch yards and ancillary devices. From the view of HVDC
grids, the node is also referred to as a bus. In the model, L
denotes the set of DC branches (i.e. edges) that are power com-
ponents transferring power from bus to bus, including trans-
mission lines (denoted as Ll ), DC/DC converters (denoted as
Lc ), series of power flow controllers and lines (denoted as Lf ).
With bipolar configurations, HVDC grids are supposed to run
symmetrically in normal states [28].
By definition, the net power injected into bus i is
Pi = Vi Ii ∀i ∈ N . (1)
1344 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 34, NO. 2, MARCH 2019

Fig. 1. Equality of a DC/DC converter.

where Vi is the nodal voltage at bus i and Ii is the net current

injected into the grid from bus i.
If branch (i, j) is a transmission line, i.e. (i, j) ∈ Ll , the
current through it obeys Ohm’s law, formulated as
Fig. 2. The framework of the proposed planning model.
Iij = gij Vi − gij Vj . (2)
Kirchhoff’s current law in the HVDC grid can be formulated
where gij is the conductance of line (i, j). as
If branch (i, j) is a DC/DC converter, i.e. (i, j) ∈ Lc , it is 
modeled as an ideal DC/DC converter behind a resistor. As Ii − Iij = 0 ∀i ∈ N . (9)
c
shown in Fig. 1, Dij is the current ratio, and gij is the equivalent (i,j )∈L
conductance.
In Fig. 1, DC/DC converter is lossless, which can be formu- The element-wise form can be rewritten into the form of
lated as (3). Meanwhile, (4) and (5) hold. vectors and matrices as (10) after the current is substituted by
power and voltage in (1), (2), (6), and (7).

Vi Iij = Dij Iij Vi , (3)

P − diag(V )GV = 0, (10)
Vi = Vj − Ij i /gij
c
, (4)
where G is a matrix whose entries are defined as (11).
Ij i = −Dij Iij (5)
⎧ c
⎪ −gij /Dij i < j ∧ ij ∈ Lc ∪ Lf
 ⎪
⎪
where Vi is the voltage between the ideal converter and the ⎪
⎪
⎨ −gj i /Dj i i > j ∧ ij ∈ Lc ∪ Lf
c
c
equivalent resistor; gij is the conductance of the equivalent re- ⎪
sistor; Dij is the current ratio of the converter/PFC in branch Gij := −gij i = j ∧ ij ∈ Ll (11)
⎪
⎪ 
(i, j). ⎪
⎪
 ⎪
⎪ ik ∈L gik i=j
Such that (6) and (7) can be obtained by eliminating Vi in ⎩
0 otherwise
(3)–(4) and substituting Iij in (5).
c c where all conductance values have been modified if a branch
gij gij
Iij = V
2 i − Vj , (6) contains any PFC, and the Dij = 1 for variable resistors.
Dij Dij A mathematical model for power flow analysis in HVDC grids
c
gij is established as (10) shows, which consists of ||N || nonlinear
c
Ij i = gij Vj − Vi . (7) equations. Furthermore, these equations become quadratic if
Dij
current ratios of DC/DC converters and control ratios of PFCs
If branch (i, j) is a transmission line cascaded by a PFC, are fixed.
i.e. (i, j) ∈ Lf , the model become a little complex. Two cate-
gories of PFCs are modeled. The first is voltage-based, including III. PROBLEM FORMULATION OF THE RELIABILITY-ORIENTED
DC/DC converters and modular multilevel DC converters. These NETWORKING PLANNING
components can share the model for DC/DC converters in (6)
c f f As shown in Fig. 2, the proposed planning model contains
and (7) after gij is replaced by gij + gij (gij is the equivalent
two levels. In the upper level, the candidate scheme s is the
conductance of the PFC in branch(i, j)). The other category in-
decision variable, including the locations and capacity of PFCs
cludes variable resistors, controlling the current in branches by
f and transmission lines to be built. Investment and reliability are
adjusting their resistance. After gij in (2) is substituted by gij
selected as objectives. However, these two objectives are diffi-
in (8), variable resistors have no difference from transmission
cult to evaluate in the planning. Since the optimal allocation of
lines in Ll .
PFCs can be found once all transmission lines and converter sta-
f 1 tions are fixed, newly built PFCs are dependent on the locations
gij = (8)
rij + γij xij and capacity of transmission lines. So the allocation of PFCs is
model as a lower-level problem with given transmission lines.
where rij and γij are parameters of the PFC in branch (i, j); Also, the optimal load shedding (OLS) is modeled as another
xij is the position variable for the PFC. lower-level problem to facilitate the evaluation of reliability.

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XIE et al.: RELIABILITY-ORIENTED NETWORKING PLANNING FOR MESHED VSC-HVDC GRIDS 1345

As analyzed, the upper-level model can be formulated as 3) Power Flow Controllers: It is unable to control the current
in all branches if cycles exist in an HVDC grid. To promise a
Minimize [C(s), R(s)] (12a)
s flexible control, PFCs should be integrated. In the planning,
subject to s∈S (12b) thus, we need to find a set of locations to install PFCs. There are
probably more than one valid combinations of locations, among
where s denotes a candidate scheme, i.e. the locations and ca- which the best one should have the minimum total capacity as
pacity of lines; S is the set of all candidate schemes; C(s) and the capacity of PFCs determines the investment to a great extent.
R(s) are functions to evaluate the investment and reliability for So the investment in PFCs can be formulated as
scheme s.  
There are two points to explain in the upper-level model. First, C f (s) = min Af + B f Iijm ax . (16)
Lfs
unavailability indices rather than availability indices should be (i,j )∈Lfs
selected as reliability indices in R(s) to coincide with the di-
rection of the optimization. Second, PFCs are commonly inside where Af and B f are parameters for the investment in PFCs;
converter stations or switch yards, so they experience fewer Iijm ax is the thermal stability current for branch (i, j).
threats from the environment. Also, it is easier and more eco- Such that the total investment in (13) can be further formu-
nomical to set a standby for a PFC. Even if a PFC fails, the lated as
 
transmission capacity of the branch still exists after switching a C(s) = Alij + Acij
paralleled wire on. So, the allocation of PFCs is not optimized (i,j )∈Lcs
(i,j )∈Lls ∪Lfs
for reliability in the lower-level model.  
C(s), R(s) in (12a) and lower-level problems derived from + min Af + B f Iijm ax . (17)
them are formulated as follows. Lfs
(i,j )∈Lfs

A. Investment Appraisal B. Reliability Evaluation

The investment to construct an HVDC grid is divided into
three part, namely investment in transmission lines, converter
stations, and PFCs. For a candidate scheme s ∈ S, the total
investment is
C(s) = C l (s) + C c (s) + C f (s).
where C(s), C l (s), C c (s), C f (s) are investment functions for
the whole grid, transmission lines, converters and PFCs respec-
tively.
1) Transmission Lines: The investment of transmission lines
can be directly obtained from the candidate scheme as (14)
shows.

C l (s) = Alij (14)
(i,j )∈Lls ∪Lfs
where Alij is the investment of transmission line (i, j), usually
given as a planning condition; the subscript s in Lls and Lfs
For the sake of simplicity, two practical features are adopted
as two assumptions to simplify the evaluation of reliability.
A1. the probability of multi-order faults is much less the
probability of one-order faults in an HVDC grid;
(13) A2. the redundancy in an HVDC grid is relatively
inadequate.
Based on assumption A1 and A2, the reliability of HVDC
grids can be estimated with N-1 fault case analysis. It is noted
the proposed method is still effective after Ds substituted by a
more general set (e.g. generated by Monte Carlo simulation), if
without assumption A1 and A2. There are a series of quantitative
indices, such as loss of load probability (LOLP) and expected
energy not supplied (EENS) [29]. EENS, in this paper, is chosen
as the reliability metric of HVDC grids as recommended in [27].

R(s) = pd ENSd , (18)
d∈Ds

denotes the case under scheme s.
2) Converter Stations: The location and size of AC/DC con-
verter stations are determined by these of power plants and loads,
so the investment of AC/DC converters is generally a constant
in the planning. As for DC/DC converters, they are supposed
to be installed inside AC/DC converter stations or switch yards
where pd is the probability of the fault case d, i.e. the proba-
bility that branch d fails and the other components are active,
obtained by the forced outage rate (FOR) of components with
the following equation.
pfd r

pd = (1 − pfijr ). (19)
for easy maintaining and saving investment. The investment of 1− pfd r (i,j )∈L
DC/DC converters depends on whether transmission lines con-
nect two buses with different normal voltages, so the investment where pf r can be estimated from historical statistics or provided
varies in the planning. Therefore, only the investment of DC/DC by vendors.
converters is taken into account in the paper. The load shedding in fault cases can be obtained by solving
 an optimal power flow (OPF) problem with an objective to
C c (s) = Acij (15)
minimize the economic loss. Herein, this OPF is termed as OLS
(i,j )∈Lcs
that is formulated as (20a). Note that the reliability indices via
where Acij is the investment of the converter in branch (i, j), OLS are generally a little optimistic, but they are enough for the
usually given as a planning condition. purpose of planning.

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1346
OLS-nl:
min η T P shd
s. t. P gn + P shd − P ld = diag(V )GV
|Gij,d (Vi − Vj )| ≤ Iijm ax , ∀(i, j) ∈ L
P gn,m in ≤ P gn ≤ P gn,m ax
0≤P shd
≤P ld
V m in ≤ V ≤ V m ax
 gn 
P + P shd − P ld  ≤ diag(V 0 )I c,m ax
where η T is the vector of economic losses due to shedding;
P shd is the vector of the curtailed power; V , V m in , V m ax and
V 0 are vectors for nodal voltages, their lower/upper bounds and
their normal values; Gij,d is the Gij under fault case d, P gn ,
P gn,m in , P gn,m ax are vectors for the power injected into buses
and the lower and upper bounds; I c,m ax is the vector of the
limited current values for DC/DC converters.
In the model, P shd and P gn are decision variables, and Dij ,
xij , γij in Gij,d and V are the state variables. Objective (20a)
represents the total economic loss per unit time. Constraint (20b)
guarantees the power balance. Constraint (20c) considers the
thermal stability current of transmission lines. Constraint (20d)–
(20f) enforce the limits of injected power, shed power and nodal
voltage respectively. Constraint (20g) represents the limit of
capacity for AC/DC converters.
In the presented OLS model, the interaction between AC
systems and HVDC grids is not taken into account. If necessary,
virtual AC buses proposed in [22] can be introduced to consider
the interaction by supplementing linear constraints. If security
constraints in AC systems are still to take into consideration, AC
power flow constraints for AC networks in [30] can be further
supplemented. As the planned objective is the HVDC grid, these
supplemented constraints are not formulated repeatedly in the
paper.
If only the peak load is utilized to evaluate reliability, the en-
ergy not supplied under fault case d, i.e. ENSd , can be obtained
by summing nodal energy up with (21). Otherwise, ENSd is the
expectation of ENS at all load levels, in which ENS at each load
level is obtained by OLS and (21).
 and then widely used to solve multi-objective programmings.
ENSd = 8760 1T P shd (21)
As (20b) and (20c) are nonlinear and nonconvex, OLS-nl
model is a nonlinear and nonconvex programming. It can be
solved by interior point method. Since the voltage just varies in
a small range, e.g. 0.95–1.05 p.u., (20b) can be approximated
with
P gn + P shd − P ld = diag(V 0 )GV .
Hence, a linear model is obtained by replacing (20b) in OLS-
nonlinear model with (22) and fixing the control ratios of DC/DC
converters and PFCs, denoted by OLS-l.
In the OLS model, the grid can be either a connected grid or
a disconnected grid. For disconnected grids, OLS model can be
divided into several OLS models, whereas multiple grids can be
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 34, NO. 2, MARCH 2019
(20a)
(20b)
(20c)
(20d)
(20e)
(20f)
(20g)
Fig. 3. The solution procedure of the upper-level problem.
combined into one OLS model, or more than one OLS models
can merge into one OLS model.
IV. PROPOSED SOLUTION METHOD
The proposed model is a bi-level programming. In the paper,
NSGA-II is employed to solve the upper-level multi-objective
optimization. As for lower-level problems, the allocation of
PFCs, the core to optimize the investment, is solved based on
the graph theory while acceleration algorithms are developed to
accelerate the reliability evaluation.
A. Solution Procedure for the Upper-Level Optimization
The upper-level problem formulated in (12a) is solved with
NSGA-II. NSGA-II was proposed by T. Deb et al. in 2002 [31],
In order to make the paper self-contained, the basic idea of
NSGA-II is introduced. Detailed explanations and formulations
can be found in [31].
The procedure to solve the upper-level problem is shown
in Fig. 3, where the major steps are noted with numbers. In
NSGA-II, a generation contains a set of individuals. Each in-
dividual, i.e. a vector of genes, represents a candidate scheme.
(22)
Each gene, i.e., an integer, is the number of transmission lines
to build in the valid location. As noted in Fig. 3, the procedure
includes the following key steps.
1) Evaluating objective functions: This step is to evaluate
the investment and the reliability metric via solving a bundle
of lower-level optimizations. It’s the key part of the paper, ex-
plained in details in the next two sections.
XIE et al.: RELIABILITY-ORIENTED NETWORKING PLANNING FOR MESHED VSC-HVDC GRIDS
2) Sorting: Individuals are to be sort into Pareto fronts with
fast non-dominated sort algorithm. Then individuals in each
front are further sorted by crowding distance [31].
3) Generating offspring: Crossover and mutations are used
to generate offsprings. Crossover is to generate two offsprings
by exchanging some slices of genes from two parents, and mu-
tations are to generate offsprings by changing some genes of a
parent.
4) Selecting the next generation: The individuals of the next
generation are selected from current generation and its off-
springs. Dominating Pareto fronts have a high priority to their
dominated fronts, and the individuals with larger crowding dis-
tance in the same front have higher priority.
B. Optimal Allocation of PFCs
As the current in branches could be controlled but only as
many as the number of available nodes minus one, the minimum
number of PFCs to install is
nc = max(0, ||L|| + ng − ||N || − ||Lf ||).
where ng is the number of subgrid, || · || is the cardinality op-
erator. So nc locations are to find for the optimum Lf , where
PFCs should exactly locate in nc distinct circles.
In this paper, we presented a novel algorithm to optimally
allocate PFCs based on the graph theory. Instead of searching
locations for PFCs directly, the core idea of the algorithm is to
find all branches not to be cascaded by PFCs first and allocate
PFCs on the rest branches. For a connected undirected graph, a
spanning tree is a graph including all the vertices with the min-
imum possible number of edges [32]. Due to the tree structure,
the power through all branches in a spanning tree of a con-
nected HVDC grid can be controlled. As adding just one edge
to a spanning tree will create a cycle, the branches not in the
spanning tree should be cascaded by PFCs to remain the feasible
control. Therefore, finding locations to install PFCs is equal to
finding spanning trees. If a spanning tree has the maximum total
capacity of all branches, the corresponding locations to install
PFCs are exactly the optimum locations. Hence the proposed
algorithm finds optimum locations by searching the minimum
spanning tree/forest weighed by the minus branch capacities.
As Algorithm 1 illustrates, the algorithm is based on Prim’s
algorithm [33], a classic algorithm with a time complexity of
O(||L|| log(||N ||)).
After the locations of PFCs (Fs ) are determined, the invest-
ment in (16) can be obtained by
 
C f (s) = Af + B f Iijm ax . (24)
(i,j )∈Fs
C. Acceleration of Reliability Evaluation
The basic evaluation method is crude and time-consuming.
Provided that there are 50 branches in an HVDC grid, there will
be 250,000 OLS problems are to solve if the size of a population
and the number of iterations are set to 100 and 50 respectively. In
the planning, therefore, it is a time-consuming task to solve OLS
problems, especially using OLS-nl model. Although the limit
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1347
Algorithm 1: Search Optimal Locations to Install PFCs.
Input: The topology of the grid, G(N , L);
a dictionary mapping each branch to its capacity, I m ax .
1: Remove all branches in Lc ∪ Lf from G;
2: for all i ∈ N do
3: Map i to a branch W [i], and initialize W [i] with
None;
4: Map i to a number I[i], and initialize I[i] with 0;
5: end for
6: Let F = L
7: repeat
8: Find and remove a bus i having the maximum
possible value of I[i] from N ;
9: Remove W [i] from F if W [i] is not None;
10: for all branch (i, j) ∈ L do
11: if j ∈ N and I m ax [ij] > I[j] then
12: W [j] = (i, j);
13: I[j] = I m ax [ij];
14: end if
(23)
15: end for
16: until N is empty;
Output:The locations of PFCs to install, F.
of time in planning is not so strict as that in operation, a quick
planning is capable of shortening the design cycle, especially in
cases needing iterations. Therefore, two acceleration algorithms
are proposed for reliability evaluation.
1) Subgrid-Cache Algorithm: The same OLS problem may
appear more than one time in the planning. Different individuals
in the planning may have fault cases with the same topology.
For example, topologies are the same when two individuals only
have 1 line different from each other and the exact lines fail in
respective fault cases. Also, in some fault cases, networks break
up into several subgrids, and some of these subgrids from dif-
ferent individuals are the same. Hence, we introduce the cache
technique to save the OLS results and recover them when the
same fault case occurs instead of solving OLS again. The term
cache means storing most important things with a limited mem-
ory dynamically.
In the proposed algorithm, ENSd is calculated as the proce-
dure shown in Fig. 4 instead of running OLS directly. In the
procedure, the load shedding of each subgrid ENSd,k is calcu-
lated separately, and then the ENSd is obtained by summing
them up. ENSd,k can be obtained directly if the gth subgrid has
been cached; otherwise, ENSd,k is to be calculated and then
pushed into the cache pool.
It is noted that the size of cache pool is limited, and different
cached subgrids are of different importance, so a proper cache
strategy is required to deploy. Frequently used items in the cache
pool should have high priority to keep stored deservedly, so a
frequency-based cache algorithm is suitable. Meanwhile, the re-
cent generations are more likely to reach optimal individuals, so
the cached items used more recently is of higher importance, in-
dicating that the cache algorithm should be also recency-based.
1348 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 34, NO. 2, MARCH 2019

Step 1: calculate the adequacy of the subgrid with the follow-

ing equation.
adq
Pd,k = 1T (P gd,k
n ,m ax
− P ld
d,k ) (27)
adq
where Pd,k is the adequacy of subgrid k under fault case d;
g n ,m ax
P d,k is the vector of maximum nodal injected power; P ld d,k
is the vector of nodal loads.
adq
If Pd,k is negative, enter Step 5.
Step 2: re-dispatch the injected power with the following
linear equation.

1T P gd,k
n ,0
− P ld
d,k
P gd,k
n ,r
= P gd,k
n
+ adq
(P gd,k
n ,m ax
− P gd,k
n ,0
).
Pd,k
(28)
Fig. 4. Flowchart of the subgrid-cache algorithm.

In the paper, an improved cache replacement algorithm based
on the least frequently used (LFU) algorithm [34] is used to
maintain the cache pool. In the algorithm, a prior factor νk
is used to weigh the importance (related to the frequency) of
cached items. Compared with the crude LFU in computer sci-
ence, the proposed algorithm introduces a coefficient τ to reduce
νk between generations in NSGA-II. Within a generation, the
prior factor will increment as follows if the cached is used once.
 Along with the proposed cache algorithm, the above algo-
ν k = νk + 1

where νk is the previous prior factor.
After evaluating a generation, the prior factor attenuate as
follows.

νk = τ ν k .
With the proposed cache replacement strategy, the cache pool
works in a recency-prior mode between generations and in a
frequency-prior mode within a generation and total procedure.
Cooperating with the NSGA-II algorithm, the improved LRU
algorithm combines the benefits of LFU and least recently used
(LRU) algorithm.
2) Optimum-Test Algorithm: With regard to the calculation
of ENSd,k in Fig. 4, an optimum-test algorithm is adopted to ac-
celerate the calculation. The constraint (20e) and a non-negative
η guarantee a non-negative objective, so a feasible solution will
be one of the optima once it produces a zero objective. In prac-
tice, there is redundancy in power systems, so the outage of a line
leads to non-shedding in a large portion of fault cases, in which it
is unnecessary to run OLS. We proposed an optimum-test algo-
rithm to give sufficient conditions to classify these no-shedding
fault cases.
Similar to the re-dispatching method in reliability evaluation
[22], the idea of the algorithm is straightforward. Each subgrid
is a connected network, so the power flow is easy to perform. If
a valid solution can be obtained from the calculation of power
flow, there will be no shedding, i.e. ENSd,k = 0. It is to say the
solution is exactly one of the optima for the OLS model. The
procedure of the algorithm is listed as follows.
where P gd,k
n ,r
is the vector for the re-dispatched power of subgrid
k under fault case d; P gd,k n ,0
is the vector of minimum nodal
injected power.
Step 3: perform power flow analysis with the re-dispatched
output of generators P gd,kn ,r
.
Step 4: ENSd,k = 0 and enter Step 6 if the results of power
flow violate no constraint; enter Step 5 otherwise.
Step 5: run OLS to obtain ENSd,k
Step 6: print ENSd,k .
(25) rithm is expected to accelerate the reliability evaluation.
V. NUMERICAL TESTS
As no benchmark exists to test the proposed method, two
customized cases are chosen to validate the proposed planning
(26) method and investigate the efficiency, comprising of the Euro-
pean Supergrid and the Chinese ultra-HVDC grid. The former
test system is to expand a meshed HVDC grid, and the latter is to
network separated HVDC systems. All algorithms are deployed
on MathWorks Matlab R2017b, and the CPU of the computer
is Intel Core i7-4790.
A. European Continental Overlay HVDC Grid
The European Continental Overlay HVDC grid is a planned
HVDC grid laying on the current European AC grid, also known
as European Supergrid. Rated at ±640 kV, the grid has 40 DC
buses and 52 transmission lines. The total load is 26.7 GW, and
the capacity of power sources is 30 GW. The topology is shown
in Fig. 5. More details can be found in [28].
First of all, a planning of PFCs is conducted first. 13 locations
of PFCs are determined by the proposed methods, which are
shown in Fig. 5 with red rectangles.
As analyzed in [22], this grid has a badly-structured topology
in terms of reliability, so we aim to provide an enhanced plan to
construct a reliable network in the southern part. The optional ca-
pacities of transmission lines are 1200 MW and 2400 MW. The
investment of transmission line rated at 1200 MW are 1 m$/km
and 4 m$/km for overhead lines and submarine cables respec-
tively. The investment of PFCs is 0.1 m$/MW/pole.

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XIE et al.: RELIABILITY-ORIENTED NETWORKING PLANNING FOR MESHED VSC-HVDC GRIDS
Fig. 5. The topology of European continental HVDC grid.
TABLE I
ELAPSED TIME AND THE COUNT OF PROCEDURES
For the NSGA-II algorithm, the size of the population and the
number of iterations are both 50. In the case, more than 200,000
OLS problems are to solve, where each problem has 28 decision
variables and more than 260 constraints. Elapsed time and the
count of procedures are listed in Table I. In the table, “OLS-l-
nc” means no cache algorithm is applied, and “OLS-l-no” is for
no optimum-test.
By comparing the counts of fault cases and the count of OLS
executions in Table I, it can be found that about 80% of all fault
cases shed no load after applying the proposed redispatching
method, i.e. the optimum-test method reduces about 80% of
OLS executions, with a reduction of 54% CPU time. Further-
more, the application of the subgrid-cache algorithm reduces
46% of OLS executions, with a reduction of 48% CPU time.
In sum, the application of the proposed method reduces about
75% of the total elapsed time, which proves the efficiency of the
proposed method.
As shown in Table I, the method using OLS-nl model cost
more than a whole day, about 100 times greater than that us-
ing OLS-l model. In addition, with all N-1 and N-2 fault cases
evaluated, the root-mean-square value and mean value of errors
between OLS-l and OLS-nl are 11.25% and −3.17% respec-
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1349
Fig. 6. First Pareto fronts and enumerated schemes.
Fig. 7. Ratios of cache.
tively. So the OLS-l model is a more practical model to evaluate
the load shedding after failures.
Four Pareto fronts are shown in Fig. 6(a). The first fronts
of 34th and 50th iterations are roughly similar, indicating 50
iterations are enough to obtain a reasonable result. In order to
test the optimality, we enumerated all schemes with no more
than 4 newly built lines. The investment and reliability of these
schemes is shown in Fig. 6(b). No enumerated scheme domi-
nates the schemes in the first Pareto front obtained by the pro-
posed method. It partly supports the validity of the proposed
method.
To investigate the effectiveness of the improved LFU algo-
rithm, a set of attenuation coefficients (τ ) are used to re-plan
the grid. Ratios of cache (the number of cache usage / the num-
ber of OLS usage) are illustrated in Fig. 7. In the figure, τ = 1
represents the crude LFU algorithm, and τ < 1 indicates the
improved LFU algorithm is used. The figure shows that the
improved LFU algorithm promotes the efficiency of the cache
pool for a range of τ (0.4 ∼ 0.9) while τ less than 0.4 leads to
a negative effect.
Each item in the first Pareto front is an optimal scheme,
among which three schemes deserve to be explained fur-
ther, termed non-investment scheme, fuzzy-optimal scheme
and most-reliable scheme. The non-investment scheme is the
scheme without any transmission expansion, but only adding
PFCs shown in Fig. 5. This scheme is meaningless to perform a
reliability-oriented expansion. The fuzzy-optimal scheme is an
optimal scheme chosen by the fuzzy decision method in [35],
[36]. A fuzzy-optimal scheme with a desirable level (0.5, 0.5)
is shown in Fig. 8(a) with red dashed lines. The most-reliable
scheme is the scheme satisfying N-1 security, shown in Fig. 8(b).
B. Ultra-HVDC Grid of China
As shown in Fig. 9, there will be 14 ultra-HVDC transmission
systems in commission in China by the end of 2018, rated
1350
Fig. 8. Fuzzy decision and most reliable decision.
Fig. 9. Ultra-HVDC transmission systems by the end of 2018.
TABLE II
ELAPSED TIME AND THE COUNT OF PROCEDURES
at ±800 kV or ±1100 kV. A plan, in this paper, is made to
network HVDC grids on the basis of these HVDC systems.
41 transmission lines, all valid lines shorter than 500 km, are
chosen as candidate lines. The investment of overhead lines and
submarine lines are 0.5 m$/km and 2 m$/km respectively. The
investment of PFCs are the same as that in the case of European
Supergrid. The size of the population and the number of iteration
in NSGA-II is 100 and 50 respectively.
The Elapsed time and count of procedures in the planning is
shown in Table II. In the case, more than 160,000 OLS problems
are to solve, where each problem has 28 decision variables and
more than 150 constraints. The proposed method also proves a
high efficiency in this case, reducing nearly 80% of total CPU
time.
The results of the planning are depicted in Fig. 10(a). The first
Pareto front of the 34th iteration is nearly the same as that of the
50th iteration, so 50 iterations are also enough to obtain a stable
solution. Different from the front in the case of the European
Supergrid, the bottom of first Pareto front is flat, which means
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 34, NO. 2, MARCH 2019
Fig. 10. Planning results of Chinese ultra-HVDC grid.
Fig. 11. Planning results of Chinese ultra-HVDC grid considering AC
networks in Jiangsu Province.
that the increment of investment gains quite a little improvement
of reliability for these schemes. When the desirable level is (0.7,
0.7), the fuzzy decision is shown in Fig. 10(b). Three grids forms
in the scheme, among which the grid centering at bus 17 (Sunan
station) is the largest one, having 14 buses and 13 branches.
Two HVDC systems still keep isolated because no near station
is around them.
No cycle lays in the topology of Fig. 10(b), attributed to the
tradeoff between reliability and economy. With a limited budget,
connecting more HVDC systems to the grid is likely to provide
more benefits than enhancing existing grid by adding circles.
Therefore, a meshed topology is possibly not a preferable choice
at the primary stage to develop an HVDC grid.
In order to investigate the influence of AC systems on the plan-
ning, we take the 500 kV AC network in Jiangsu Province into
account and replanned the case. The AC network includes 59
AC buses and 229 transmission lines, connected to Sunan (17),
Jiangsu (23) and Taizhou (24). Results are shown in Fig. 11.
Compared with Fig. 10, the first Pareto front moves left, in-
dicating the reliability is significantly enhanced for the same
investment after considering AC networks. The fuzzy decision
is also different, in which case line 17–24, 17–21 are replaced
by line 24–25. The comparison shows that a strongly coupled
AC network impacts the planning of HVDC grids. If a large
number of converter stations are also interconnected by pow-
erful AC networks, it is necessary to take the AC systems into
consideration in the planning.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
This paper presents a bi-level model to optimize the network
of HVDC grids. The proposed planning model takes reliability
and investment as objectives in the upper level, and solved by
NSGA-II. In the lower level, N-1 fault cases analysis and OLS
are applied to obtain the reliability index. A cache algorithm
XIE et al.: RELIABILITY-ORIENTED NETWORKING PLANNING FOR MESHED VSC-HVDC GRIDS 1351

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