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fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TEC.2017.2661540, IEEE
Transactions on Energy Conversion
Self-synchronisation of Wind Farm in MMC-based
HVDC System: A Stability Investigation
Mohammad Amin, Member, IEEE, Atle Rygg and Marta Molinas, Member, IEEE,
Abstract—The stability of offshore wind power network con-
nected through a High Voltage dc (HVDC) transmission line can
be challenging since a strong ac collection (ACC) bus might not
be available, when there is no rotating machine connected in that
bus. In addition, the synchronization unit (Phase-Locked-Loop)
has shown to have a significant impact in achieving satisfactory
performance. To tackle this problem, this paper has proposed a
wind energy conversion system (WECS) controller for such ACC
bus based on the synchronverter concept. A synchronverter -an
inverter without PLL that mimics the synchronisation mechanism
inherent to Synchronous Generator (SG)- is introduced in the
grid side of WECS Voltage source converter (VSC) where the
wind farms are connected to ac network through Modular
Multilevel Converter (MMC)-based HVDC system. In order
to determine the stability of the interconnected system, an
impedance-based stability method is adopted. The impedances
of both the wind power inverter and MMC-HVDC converter
are analytically derived and the analytical model is verified by
comparing the frequency responses obtained from numerical
simulation. The detailed analysis and the results presented show
the benefits of this controller and its potential for stability.
The results highlights the synchronverter’s ability in keeping
better performance compared to PLL based dq-domain control
in point of stability and control in integrating offshore wind farm
through MMC-based HVDC system, since the impedance of the
synchronverter reflects a simple R-L characteristic. On the other
hand, the impedance of PLL based dq-domain control impedance
is inductive above 2 kHz and reflects composite characteristics
below 2 kHz with different resonance points and with higher
impedance magnitude at low frequencies making it more vulner-
able to voltage instability. Finally, time domain simulation results
are presented to validate the theoretical analysis and to show how
the self-synchronisation impacts on the system performance.
Index Terms—Modular Multi-level Converter (MMC), High
Voltage dc (HVDC), Wind Energy Conversion System (WECS),
Synchronverters, Offshore Grids, wind farm.
I. I NTRODUCTION
M ODULAR Multilevel converter (MMC)-based High
Voltage dc (HVDC) transmission system draws con-
siderable attention in grid integration of large scale offshore
wind farms due to having superior advantages such as modular
design, easily scalable in terms of voltage and power, low
Manuscript received February 23, 2016 and revised August 14, 2016;
accepted January 26, 2017. The PhD studies of M. Amin are partly funded
by the project Protection and Fault Handling in Offshore HVDC Grids
(ProOfGrids), managed by SINTEF Energy Research and financed by the
Norwegian Research Council together with industry partners; EDF, NVE,
National Grid, Siemens, Statkraft, Statnett and Statoil. More details are
available at http://www.sintef.no/Projectweb/ProOfGrids
The authors are with the Department of Engineering Cybernetics,
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, 7491,
Norway, e-mail: mohammad.amin@ntnu.no, atle.rygg@itk.ntnu.no and
marta.molinas@ntnu.no.
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1
distortion of output voltage, minimize filter design, and high
efficiency [1] - [3]. The stability of such offshore wind power
network connected through HVDC transmission line is a
critical problem [4] - [6]. Field experience has shown that wind
farms connected through HVDC system are suffering from
sub-synchronous oscillation, harmonic resonance, and poor
system performance, since there is no strong grid or rotating
machine connected to the ac collection (ACC) bus [7]. The
resonance caused by long transmission cables [8], passive fil-
ters [9], transformers [10], and series compensated capacitors
[12] are investigated in existing literature. The possible causes
of the oscillatory phenomena resulting from interaction of dq-
frame WECS converter controller and HVDC system converter
controller are investigated in [4], [11]. Moreover, WECS and
HVDC converters require a dedicated synchronization unit,
for example, PLL which has significant impact on the system
stability [13]- [14]. A slow synchronization unit could directly
affect the control performance and degrade the system stability
but a complex synchronization unit, on the other hand, adds
significant computational burden to the controller [15], [16].
Several researches have been conducted to develop the
control for power electronics converters having no dedicated
synchronization unit and at the same time emulate the inertia
and damping as a synchronous machine [17], [18], [19].
One approach of controlling VSC is known as synchronverter
[19]. Synchronverter is an inverter without PLL that mim-
ics the synchronisation mechanism inherent to Synchronous
Generator (SG). At initial development of synchronverter, it
requires a PLL for initial synchronization and later a self-
synchronized synchronverter has been developed where the
inverter can synchronize with the grid without a dedicated
synchronization unit [20], [21]. Synchronverter based control
becomes a promising technique in various applications, such
as integrating distributed generation [22], HVDC transmission
[23], [24], MMC [25]. Since most of the power plants are
connected to the ac grid through SG, synchronverter provides
better flexibility and control in integrating offshore wind farm
through HVDC transmission system due to its implementation
which is based on SG theory.
This work adopted a similar control technique of syn-
chronverter presented in [20] for ACC bus side WECS
VSC converter which can synchronize with grid without a
PLL. The interconnected system under this study includes
a WECS employing full scale converter connected to main
ac grid through MMC-based HVDC system. A type-IV full-
scale WECS is considered for this investigation. A self-
synchronization control technique is implemented to ACC bus
side WECS converter which does not require a PLL [26]. This
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TEC.2017.2661540, IEEE
converter mimics synchronous generator and can automatically
synchronize itself before connecting and can track the ACC
bus frequency after connection [20].
Synchronverter based inverters can relatively easy integrate
distributed generation; however determining the stability of
synchronverter is not easy due to non-linearities of the con-
troller. Examples of non-linearities are calculation of real and
reactive power, coupling between the frequency and the field
excitation current loops, initial self-synchronization frequency
loops. Continuous efforts have been made to investigate the
stability of such system by different approaches. One approach
for stability study of power electronics converters is based on
state-space and eigenvalue. State-space and Eigenvalue based
stability analysis has been performed for synchronverter in
[27], [28]; however this method requires detailed modeling
of each components of wind farm and MMC-HVDC system
and does not support local control development at individual
terminals. Another approach of stability analysis is based on
the impedance [5], [13], [29]- [31]. Impedance-based stability
analysis method which is first presented in [29], is the simple
method for analyzing the stability of such interconnected
system of wind farms and MMC-HVDC system. Therefore,
the impedance-based stability method is adopted to determine
the stability of the interconnected system. Once the source
and load impedances are analytically obtained, the Generalized
Nyquist Stability Criterion (GNC) is applied to predict the
stability of the interconnected system. The frequency do-
main impedance characteristics both for the wind farm and
HVDC system from offshore ACC point are presented and
the analytical model is verified by comparing the frequency
responses obtained from numerical simulation. The Nyquist
plot of impedance ratio (minor-loop gain) indicates potential
instability of the interconnected system.
The detailed analysis and the results presented show the
benefits of this controller and its potential for stability. The
results highlights the synchronverter’s ability in keeping good
performance in point of stability and control in integrating off-
shore wind farm through MMC-based HVDC system. Finally,
ib
b  axis
 vb
rotor field
axis

Ls Rs
g
Ls Rs
Lf Rf

 va 
vf


vc
Ls Rs

ic
c  axis
Fig. 1: Structure of three-phase round-rotor SG
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Transactions on Energy Conversion
2
time domain simulation results are presented to validate the
theoretical analysis and to show how the self-synchronisation
impacts on the system performance.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II
describes the modeling and control of the wind power inverter.
In addition, an impedance model of this converter will be
derived and validated by comparing with the frequency re-
sponses obtained by numerical simulation. Section III presents
the control and impedance model derivation of MMC-HVDC
converter. Section IV discusses the stability analysis and time
domain simulation. Finally, Section V concludes this work.
II. W IND E NERGY C ONVERSION S YSTEM M ODELLING
AND C ONTROL
The wind farm consists of Wind turbine generators (WTGs)
based on two-level full power back-to-back converters. The
grid side VSC of WECS is decoupled with generator side
VSC by the dc-link capacitor, therefore, the turbine mechanical
system including the generator and generator side VSC can be
replaced by a power source [4]. For simplification of analysis,
an aggregated model of wind farm is assumed in which the
wind farm is lumped into one unit of same generation capacity
as the wind farm. The wind farms are connected to ACC bus
via step-up transformer.
A. Synchronverter-based WECS control
Control systems that enables self-synchronization of grid-
connected converters is a research topic of high interest.
One of the first implementations called Virtual Synchronous
Machine (VSM) was presented in [32]. In [18] it was shown
that the VSM-concept is equivalent to droop controllers in
converter-based microgrids. Another implementation called
Synchronverter was proposed in [19]. Other similar concepts
can be found in [33]- [35]. The main difference between
implementations lies in the control system details, for example
the presence of current controller and fault-ride-through capa-
bility. Another important function is the initial synchronization
method, i.e. the ability to connect to an existing grid without
any harmful transient or overcurrent.
In this work, a control strategy based on synchronverter
is adopted for WECS where grid-side VSCs of WECS run
as synchronous machine. The implementation is based on
the synchronverter proposed in [19]. For the purpose of
implementing the synchronverter control strategy, we recall
the structure of an idealized three-phase round rotor SG as
shown in Fig. 1 [36]. The stator winding is assumed to be
a  axis a concentrated coil having self-inductance L and mutual-
 0 inductance M with a typical value of 1/2L. The field winding
is assumed to be a concentrated coil having self-inductance
ia
Lf . The phase terminal voltage, vabc = [va vb vc ]T can be
written as
diabc
vabc = −Rs iabc − Ls + eabc (1)
dt
where, iabc = [ia ib ic ]T is the stator phase currents vector;
Rs and Ls = L + M are the stator winding resistance and
inductance, respectively and eabc = [ea eb ec ]T is the back
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Transactions on Energy Conversion
3

i
vdc Ls vabc vo ,abc
Power +
source Cdc
-

Cwf vo ,abc
Sf
PI

vdc Dp
g
 ST   g

vdc ,ref PI
1 g 1
Tm,ref  Js s
PWM vo ,abc
Te 
Q Eqn. 2 
Qref 
 1
Eqn. 4
Eqn. 6
eabc SI 1
1
Ks Mg iabc Rs  sLs
 vg 2

v
Dq Mag
SQ  vo ,abc
g,ref

Fig. 2: Synchronverter (Grid-side WECS VSC) including both the electrical circuit part and electronic part.

electromotive force (EMF) due to the rotor movement and can Fig. 2 can be called electronic part of the synchronverter
be given by which controls the switches of the power part. Such a control
eabc = Mg θ̇g sinθ
f g (2) structure is assumed to be equivalent to an SG with a capacitor
bank connected in parallel with the stator terminal [19] .
where Mg is the flux field; θg is the rotor angle and Voltage in (2) corresponds to the back EMF of virtual rotor.
f g = [sinθg sin(θg − 2π ) sin(θg + 2π )].
sinθ
The inverter switches are operated such that over a switching
3 3 period, the converter outputs are to be equal to eabc as given
The mechanical part of the machine can be written by in (2) and it is achieved by a PWM technique.
The swing equation for the synchronverter can be given by
J θ̈g = Tm − Te − Dp θ̇g (3)
1
(Tm − Te − Dp θ̇g )
θ̈g = (7)
where J is the moment of inertia of all the parts rotating with J
rotor; Tm is the mechanical torque; Te is the electromagnetic where the mechanical torque, Tm is a control input and
torque and Dp is a damping factor. The electromagnetic electrical torque, Te depends on iabc and θg according to (4).
torque, Te can be found from the energy stored in the magnetic To have similar behaviour as SG, the following frequency
field of the machine and can be given by droop control loop is proposed
D E
Te = Mg iabc , sinθ
f g (4) Tm = Tm,ref + Dp (ωg − θ˙g ) (8)
3
where < ., . > denotes the conventional inner product in R . where Tm,ref is mechanical torque applied to the rotor. The
The real power, P and reactive power, Q generated by SG can grid-side WECS VSC converter control the WECS dc link
be given by, respectively voltage and reactive power. The WECS dc link voltage can
D E be controlled by controlling the mechanical torque and it is
P = Mg θ̇g iabc , sinθ
f g (5) generated by PI-controller as shown in Fig. 2 and can be given
by
Q = Mg θ̇g hiabc , cosθ
f gi . (6) kivdc
Tm,ref = (kpvdc + )(vdc − vdc,ref ) (9)
The synchronverter concept is developed based on the SG s
model (1)-(6). The electrical circuit of synchronverter (grid- where kpvdc and kivdc are the proportional and integral gain
side WECS VSC inverter) including the controller part is given of the dc voltage controller, respectively.
in Fig. 2. The electrical circuit part consists of power switch, In order to regulate the field excitation, Mg , the reactive
L − C filter and step-up transformer. The lower part of the power is controlled by a voltage droop control loop using

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Transactions on Energy Conversion
4

2 2
10 10
Z
SYNC Zw, +ve Seq
Magnitude [Ω]

Z
TOTAL

Magnitude [Ω]
0
10 0
10
Zw, −ve Seq

−2 ZSYNC
10
−2
10
100 200
Angle [o]

100

Angle [o]
0 Zw, −ve Seq
0
−100
0 1 2 3
10 10 10 10 −100 Zw, +ve Seq
Frequency [Hz]
−200 0 1 2 3
10 10 10 10
Fig. 3: Impedance model verification of Syncronverter (Solid Frequency [Hz]
line is model prediction and point-line is from numerical
simulation).
Fig. 4: Comparison of Impedance frequency response between
Synchronverter control mode and dq-domain control mode
voltage droop coefficient, Dq . The control of reactive power is with PLL obtained from numerical simulation.
shown in the lower part of Fig. 2 where the inner loop is the
voltage (amplitude) loop and outer loop is the reactive power
loop. The time constant, τv of voltage loop can be estimated The reactive power of the synchronverter is assumed to
K
by τv ≈ θ̇D as variation θ̇ is very small where K follows if be zero which gives cosθg0 = 0 and sinθg0 = 1. Hence,
q
τv and Dq have been chosen. Magnetic field excitation, Mg linearizing (2) at sinθg0 = 1 and inserting (12) and (14), ea
and reactive power reference, Qm,ref can be given by can be obtained
Gv
1
Mg = (Qg,ref − Q) (10)
z }| !{
Ks Dq θ̇g0 3RHvdc Mg0 I0 Mg0 Dq I0
ea = − + + ṽa
Qm,ref = Qref + Dq (vg,ref − vg ) (11) Ks 2Vdc0 (Js + Dp ) Ks (Js + Dp )
where vg is the output voltage magnitude. Gi
z }| !{
2
3RHvdc Mg0 V0 (Mg0 )
B. Impedance Model of Synchronverter + − ĩa (15)
2Vdc0 (Js + Dp ) (Js + Dp )
In order to apply the impedance-based stability analysis,
deriving the impedance model is a prerequisite. The ac This converter does not have any PLL and it is assumed that
impedance model of synchronverter can be obtained from (1) there is no coupling term. Therefore, the positive and negative
by dividing the phase voltage by current, therefore eabc needs sequence impedance is assumed to be equal. Linearizing (1)
to be presented in term of phase voltage and current. and inserting (15), the impedance model of the syncronverter
It is assumed that both reactive power generation and can be obtained as
reference are zero. Applying linearization on (7)-(11), small- ṽa Rs + sLs − Gi
˜ ZSY N C = − = . (16)
signal model of θ̇g can be written as ĩa 1 − Gv
˜ Hvdc (s) Dq ia0 sinθg0 Mg0 sinθg0 Including the filter capacitor Cf w and transformer impedance,
θ̇g = ṽdc + ṽg − ĩa
(Js + Dp ) Ks (Js + Dp ) (Js + Dp ) ZT,W ECS , the total impedance of Syncronverter is given by
(12)
ZSY N C
where Hvdc (s) = kpvdc + kivdc /s. ZT OT AL = + ZT,W ECS . (17)
1 + sCf w ZSY N C
For a defined wind speed, output wind power characteristics
is similar as the behaviour of constant power load (CPL) and The impedance model derived analytical is verified by numer-
it can be represented by a negative impedance, R in steady- ical simulation in MATLAB Simulink. A perturbation current
state. For single-phase system, power balance between ac and (5% of rated current) in abc-domain at different frequency
dc side can be written as from 1 Hz to 5 kHz is injected in shunt and the voltage is
v2 measured. Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) tool from SimPow-
Pph = dc = va ia (13) erSystem is used to analyze the different harmonic voltages
3R
and currents. The impedance is calculated by dividing the
and applying linearization, it can be written as
voltage by current at each frequency. The impedance frequency
3R response of syncronverter is shown in Fig. 3. The analytical
ṽdc = (V0 ĩa + I0 ṽa ). (14)
2Vdc0 model has good agreement both magnitude and phase with

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Transactions on Energy Conversion
5

WFMMC
iDC iu , a BA SM iu ,b BA SM1
iu ,c A Leg ACC LT RT Vs ,abc
1 B SM1 Submodule I s ,abc
Vdc
Arm A A A
B SM 2 B SM 2 B SM 2 A C

vdc ,u A A A B kf
B SM N B SM N B SM N * ref
v abc  vabc Modulation
La La La H vac (s)  and Voltage
balancing
Ra Ra Ra
is ,a Fig. 6: Control of WFMMC: ac voltage control.
Ra R is ,b
a Rais ,c
La La La
haviour and high impedance magnitude could result in voltage
instability problems.
A A A
B SM1 B SM1 B SM1
III. MMC-HVDC S YSTEM M ODELING AND C ONTROL
A A A
A. System configuration
vdc ,l B SM 2 B SM 2 B SM 2
The MMC-based HVDC system comprises converter trans-
A A A
former, wind farm side MMC (WFMMC), subsea dc cable
B SM N
il ,a B SM N
il ,b B SM N
il ,c and grid side MMC (GSMMC). The point-to-point connection
HVDC system installed in the purpose of integrating wind
farm must have dc and ac voltage control objectives. The
Fig. 5: Basic structure of MMC topology for MMC-HVDC GSMMC converter regulates the HVDC-link dc voltage. An
system. energy based dc voltage control has been implemented on
the GSMMC. The energy based control implementation for
MMC has been discussed in [37] and this control structure
impedance frequency responses obtained by numerical simu- will not be further discussed due to out of scope of this study.
lation which validates the correctness of derived impedance Assuming the dc voltage controller performance is satisfactory
model. and provides constant dc voltage at WFMMC converter dc
As can be seen from the impedance in Fig. 3, the impedance side, the GSMMC-HVDC converter can be replaced with a
characteristics of synchronverter alone is similar to the be- constant dc voltage source in the impedance model derivation
haviour of simple RL circuit. It is due to having similar of the WFMMC [4]. The WFMMC behaves a voltage source
control structure as an SG. In comparison with decoupled dq- at ac terminal for the wind farms.
domain control structure, it has less cascaded control structure A basic structure of MMC topology for MMC-based HVDC
which reduces the interaction between controllers and as a system is depicted in Fig. 5. Each phase leg of MMC consists
consequence, the impedance behaviour becomes similar to a of one upper and one lower arm i.e., an upper arm represented
simple RL circuit instead of being a higher order system. by subscript ’u’ and a lower arm represented by ’l’, connected
Including the filter capacitance and transformer inductance, in series with dc terminal. Each arm has N number of identical
it becomes a LCL circuit and resonance peak depends on the sub-modules (SMs) and series connected arm inductor La
circuit physical parameters. and also its equivalent resistor Ra to represent the losses
within the arm. The arm inductors suppress the high frequency
A control structure of wind power inverter in dq-domain
components from iu,abc and il,abc . The SMs provide two
including a PLL is discussed in [4], [11] and the impedance
different voltage level at its terminal depending on the stage of
frequency response in sequence-domain of the inverter in wind
the complementary switches. A sorting algorithm is adopted
power inverter application is presented in [4]. Fig. 4 shows
to balance and maintain the SMs capacitor voltages at vdc /N .
a comparison of impedance frequency responses between
synchronverter control mode and PLL based synchronization
in dq-domain control mode. Both positive and negative se- B. Control of WFMMC
quence impedances are presented for dq-domain control. As Many researches have been focused on modeling [38]-
can be seen from the impedance of dq-domain control, at [41] and controlling the MMC for example, Model predictive
frequency higher than 2 kHz, it is inductive; however, below control [42], [43], energy based control [37], PR regulator
2 kHz the impedance curves are composite and consist of in stationary frame [5], PI controller in synchronous rotating
different resonance points. In addition, the magnitudes of the frame [44], [45]. PR regulator in stationary abc-frame and
impedances are significantly higher than for synchronverter PI controller in synchronous rotating (dq-) frame are simple
control mode. With different resonance points in impedance methods and easy to implement compared to other methods. In
characteristics the system is more prone to oscillatory be- theory, the PR regulator in stationary frame is equivalent to the

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Transactions on Energy Conversion
6

PI regulator in synchronous rotating frame [46]; hence the PR 10

4

parameters are the same as the PI parameters. The advantage

Magnitude [Ω]
3
of the PR regulator over PI-regulator is that the need for 10
synchronous dq transformation in three phase system can be 10
2

avoided. Moreover, the PR regulator can be implemented for 1

10
selective harmonic compensation without requiring excessive
0
computation resources [47]. For example, it can be used to 10
eliminate second harmonic circulating current. 300
An ac voltage controller as shown in Fig. 6 is adopted in the 200

Angle [o]
WFMMC to provide an ac voltage source for the wind farm. 100
The controller is implemented in abc-reference frame and a 0
PR-controller is used to achieve the zero steady state error for −100
sinusoidal quantities [5]. The modulation voltage reference in
−200 0
stationary abc-frame can be given by 10 10
1
10
2
10
3

Frequency [Hz]
ref ∗
vabc = Hvac (s) × (vabc − vabc ) + kf vabc (18)
Fig. 7: Frequency response of MMC impedance model (Solid-
∗ line is model prediction and points are from numerical simu-
where vabc is the reference ac voltage in abc-domain; kf is the
feed forward gain of ac voltage and Hvac is the PR-controller lation).
transfer function as
kr,vac s
Hvac = kp,vac + 2 2 (19) where,
s + ω1f
2N ic0 (kf − Hv ) 1 R0 iref
 
where kp,vac and kr,vac are the proportional and resonance Gg =2 − − c
− 2(kf − Hv )
coefficient of the ac voltage controller, respectively. sCvd 2 vd
A circulating current suppression controller (CCSC) is kf N m(kf − Hv )is0
+
also implemented to limit the circulating current through 2sCvd
the switches. The circulating current flowing in each phase N 1 Ra iref
 2
kf N m2
c
consists of a dc component and low-order harmonic com- Gis =sLa + Ra + − +
sC 2 vd 4sC
ponents, mainly the negative sequence component with the
N 1 Ra iref
  
frequency twice the fundamental [48]- [50]. Therefore, in c H i
cc s0
Gic = − − kf m
order to restrain the second order harmonic current, a CCSC sC 2 vd vd
 
is adopted in abc-reference. The reference voltage generated kf N m 2(Hcc − Ra )ic0
− 1+ .
by the CCSC can be expressed as 2sC vd
vcref = Hcc (s)(iref
c − ic ) + Ra iref
c (20)
The circulating current suppression depends on the proper
where Hcc (s) is a PR-controller with resonance frequency selection of CCSC gain, therefore the PR coefficient has
2xω1f ; iref
c is the circulating current reference and Ra iref
c significant impact on the impedance of the MMC. Even
is introduced to compensate the voltage drop on the parasitic CCSC suppresses the 2nd harmonic components of circulating
resistance in the steady-state. current, in steady-state circulating current can have some
ripples that need to be considered. Hence, it is necessary to
C. Impedance model of WFMMC find an expression of circulating current in terms of ac voltage
In this subsection, with ac voltage closed-loop control an and current. Combining (18), (20) and (23) and applying
impedance model of WFMMC will be derived which includes linearization in frequency domain, and rearranging, it can be
dynamic of the CCSC. Internal dynamics of MMC can be obtained
described as third order system and are given by [51] GB GC
ĩc = ṽg + ĩs (25)
P
GA GA
v ref is 2v ref
 
C dvc
=− s + 1− c ic (21)
N dt vd vd where
C dvc∆ 2v ref is 2v ref ic N Ra iref
  
2ic0 (Ra − Hcc )
 
c 1
= 1− c − s (22) GA =sLa + Ra − − 1−
N dt vd 2 vd sC 2vd 4 vd
P P kf N mRa is0 kf N m2
dic vd vc v ref vc v ref v ∆ − + + Hcc
La = − + c + s c − Ra ic (23) 4sCvd 4sC
dt 2 4 2vd 2vd
N is0 (Hv − kf ) Ra iref
 
c 1 kf N mic0 (Hv − kf )
Combining (18), (20), (21) and (22) and applying linearization GB = − +
sCvd 2vd 4 2sCvd
in frequency domain, and rearranging, it can be obtained [5] ref
kf N m kf N mRa iref
 
kf N m Ra ic 1 c
GC = − − + − .
Gg ṽg + Gis ĩs + ĩc Gic = 0 (24) 2sC 2vd 4 8sC 4sCvd

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Offshore Onshore
SM1 SM1 SM1 SM1 SM1
Ls Dc cable SM1

i 0.575/110 kV ACC SM2 SM2 SM2 SM2 SM2 SM2

Power + Cdc SMN SMN SMN
source 110/135
SMN SMN SMN
135/380 PCC
-
ac cable kV + kV
Cwf Vdc +
380 kV
- - ac grid
i Ls
+ Cdc 0.575/110 kV
Power SM1 SM1 SM1 SM1 SM1 SM1

source - SM2 SM2 SM2 SM2 SM2 SM2

Cwf SMN SMN SMN SMN SMN SMN

Wind power inverter WF-MMC
(Synchronverter) GS-MMC

Fig. 8: Simplified configuration of interconnected system of wind farm and HVDC system.

vACC to ac collection bus through 0.575/110 kV transformer. Each

I wind farm is assumed to have 5 turbines with 1 MW rating
ZWFMMC
ZTOTAL
Iw
Wind Turbines WFMMC
Fig. 9: Small-signal equivalent impedance model of intercon-
nected system.
Now combining (24), (25), we obtain the impedance model of
MMC as
  −1
ṽg Gic GC Gic GB
ZM M C = − = Gis + Gv + . Hz and same rating as the MMC converters. The HVDC link
ĩs GA GA
(26)
Including the transformer impedance, the impedance of wind
farm side MMC can be obtained
ZW F M M C = ZM M C + ZT ransF .
The MMC does not have any PLL and there is no coupling,
therefore both positive and negative sequence impedances are
equal. The impedance model derived analytically is verified by
comparing the frequency response of the analytical model with
the impedance measured at the ACC terminal. Fig. 7 shows
the comparison between the impedance frequency responses of
analytical model and measured from the numerical simulation,
which indicates that the analytical model has good agreement
with measured impedance both magnitude and phase.
The impedance characteristics of WFMMC can be divided
into two parts. First part is at low frequency which behaviour
is capacitive and the impedance behaviour is inductive for high
frequencies. The resonance peak depends on both the internal
dynamics of the MMC and the control parameter, for example
the arm inductance, SM capacitance, number of SM, ac voltage
controller coefficient, and CCSC gain.
IV. R ESULT AND A NALYSIS OF THE I NTERCONNECTED
S YSTEM
The simplified configuration of the interconnected system is
shown in Fig. 8. It has two wind farms which are connected
vs each. To simplify the system model, 5 turbines are lumped
into one unit of 5 MW generation capacity. The generator
side VSC is supplying the full power to the ACC bus through
grid side WECS VSC and it is necessary to regulate the dc
link voltage of WECS. The control topology of synchronverter
is implemented in grid side WECS VSC. It, mimics the SG,
regulates the dc link voltage of WECS and the reactive power.
In addition, it has frequency droop and ac voltage droop as
like as conventional SG. The parameters of WECS are given
in Table I in Appendix. These wind farms are integrated to
the main ac grid through a MMC-based HVDC transmission
system. The MMC-HVDC system has a capacity of 50 MVA
equivalent. The MMC converter transformer is 110/135 kV, 50
dc voltage is 220 kV. Many researches have been conducted on
the design and the parameters selection for MMC [38]- [41]. In
this work, the arm resistance has been calculated based on the
standard parameters used in [37] where the arm resistance and
(27) inductance is 0.005 pu and 0.08 pu, respectively. A detailed
method has been presented in [38] on how to determine
the sub-module capacitance which has been adopted in this
work to select the value of the sub-module capacitance. The
parameters of MMC-HVDC are given in Table II in Appendix.
A. Control tuning of Synchronverter
The structure of classical generators for which controls
are well-known can be adopted with synchronverter. Initially,
the frequency droop coefficient, Dp is chosen such that a
frequency drop of 0.5% causes the torque to increase by 100%
from its nominal value and the voltage droop coefficient, Dq
is chosen such that a drop of 5% voltage causes the reactive
power to increase by 100%. However, these parameters can not
be directly used in synchronverter based WECS. A specific
tuning method based on the eigenvalues and participation
factor analysis of individual states is presented in [23]. The
optimized parameters used in this work are Dp = 102 and
Dq = 52696. The time response for the frequency droop and
voltage droop are kept 1 ms and 80 ms, respectively. The
voltage controller proportional gain is set to 5 and the response
time is 100 ms.

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5 1 0.02

0.015
∞
∞ 0.5 0.01 Unit Circle
Unit Circle ∞ Unit Circle (−1, j0)
Imaginary Axis

Imaginary Axis

Imaginary Axis
ω
ω 0.005 ω

0 0 0

−0.005

−0.5 −0.01
801 Hz

−0.015

−5 −1 −0.02
−3 −2 −1 0 1 2 3 −10 −8 −6 −4 −2 0 2 4 −3 −2 −1 0 1 2
Real Axis Real Axis Real Axis

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 10: (a) Nyquist plot of minor loop gain (impedance ratio); (b) Nyquist plot of minor loop gain for high value of wind
power inverter inductor and (c) zoom view of (b) (blue line is minor loop gian and red line is unit circle).

B. Stability Analysis of the Interconnected System
In order to determine the stability of the interconnected
system an impedance-based method in frequency domain is
adopted. Fig. 9 shows the small-signal equivalent impedance
model of the interconnected system, where ZW F M M C is the
impedance of WFMMC defined in (27) including transformer
leakage inductance and ZW P represents the impedance of
the wind turbine inverter in synchronverter control mode. The
impedance of a wind farm can be obtained by
ZW P,i = ZT OT AL + Zac,cable
where i=1,2,3,... is the number of wind farms and Zac,cable
is the ac cable impedance. The investigated system under this
study has two wind farms, hence the total impedance can be
given by
 
1 1
ZW P = 1/ + . (29)
ZW P 1 ZW P 2
The WFMMC is modeled by its Thevenin equivalent circuit
in the form of ideal voltage source, (Vs ) in series with
the WFMMC impedance, ZW F M M C while the aggregated
wind power inverter is modeled by its Norton equivalent
circuit consisting of current source (Iw ) in parallel with the
wind power inverter impedance, ZW P defined in (29) which
includes the capacitive filter inductance, transformer leakage
inductance and cable impedance.
From Fig. 9, the voltage at ACC point can be derived as
Vs (s)
vACC (s) =
ZW F M M C (s) 1 + ZW F M M C (s)ZW P (s)
which resembles the close-loop transfer function of negative
feedback control system and the minor loop feedback gain can
be defined as
−1
L(s) = ZW F M M C (s)ZW P (s)
hence, the stability of the interconnected system can be
determined by checking whether the minor loop gain, [L(s)]
satisfies the Nyquist stability criterion.
Based on the parameter listed in table I and II, the
impedance of the WFMMC and wind power inverter are
calculated for full wind power output condition and Fig. 10 (a)
shows the Nyquist plot of minor-loop gain. As can be seen,
the Nyquist plot of the minor-loop gain does not encircle the
point (-1, j0), therefore the system will operate stably for this
condition.
An example case is presented to show that it can predict
instability of the interconnected system. The filter inductor of
wind power inverter is purposely increased to 0.5 mH while
it is 0.05 mH (0.14 pu) initially. By increasing this inductor
we are reducing the power rating of the wind power inverter.
However, the impedance is calculated for base power condition
(28) with 5 MW wind power output and resulting Nyquist plot of
minor loop gain is shown 10 (b). As can be seen from zoom
view of Nyquist plot ( Fig. 10 (b)) in 10 (c), the minor loop
gain encircles the point (-1, j0), the interconnected system is
predicted to be unstable. The minor loop gain crosses the unit
circle at three different frequencies, however the crossing point
at frequency around 801 Hz is the closest point to (-1, j0), the
system can have an oscillation at this frequency.
C. Time domain simulation
In order to validate the above theoretical analysis, the
interconnected system as shown in Fig. 8 has been built in
MATLAB/Simulink environment association with the Sim-
PowerSystem Block-set with detailed switching model of
WECS VSC and MMC with 24 SMs per leg. The SMs are
based on the half-bridge module. A balancing algorithm is
used to balance the SMs capacitor voltage. A Matlab code
1 has been implemented to generate the PWM signal for the
−1 (30) switches. The simulation parameters are the same as the
analysis done in the frequency domain using Nyquist stability
criteria and the parameters of synchronverter-based WECS
grid side VSC and MMC converter station are given in Table
I and II in Appendix.
To validate the proposed synchronverter control, case studies
(31)
to show the initial self-synchronisation property of the system
have been included. The detailed self-synchronization of syn-
chronverter in power control mode including the droop control
has been discussed [20]. The synchronverter based WECS
inverter regulates the dc link voltage instead of power in this
case which requires one additional switch, ST for initial self-
synchonization as shown in Fig. 2. The control system has

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200 200
200

Arm voltage (kV)

150
Voltage (kV)

100
150 100
0
100 50
−100
50 0
0.2 0.22 0.24
−200 0
1.9 1.95 2 2.05 2.1
0 0.5 1 1.5 2
200 40
50 A step reduction
CB turn on of wind power
100 20
Current (A)

Arm current (A)

0
0
0 −20
−100
−40
−200 0.2 0.22 0.24
1.9 1.95 2 2.05 2.1
Time (s) −50
0 0.5 1 1.5 2
−10
20

Circulating current (A)

Fig. 11: Initial self-synchronization: offshore ac collection bus −11 CCSC turn off
10
voltages and currents when the circuit breaker turned on to −12
connect the synchronverter based WECS. 0 −13
0.2 0.22 0.24
−10

200 −20
0 18.3 0.5 1 1.5 2

100 18.2
Voltage (kV)

Cell voltage (kv)

18.4
0 18.1
0.2 0.22 0.24
−100 18.2

−200
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5
18
100 0 0.5 1 1.5 2
Time (s)
50
Current (A)

Fig. 13: Wind farm side MMC arm voltages, arm currents,
0
circulating currents and cell voltages for WFMMC.
−50

−100 interconnected system operates stably as predicted by the fre-

0 0.1 0.2 0.3
Time (s)
Fig. 12: Three-phase ac voltages and currents at offshore ac
collection bus.
four switches which are ST , Sf , SQ and SI . The function
of switches Sf , SQ and SI has been described in [20]. The
ST is kept off during initial synchronization to provide zero
torque reference as well as not to provide feed-back from
close-loop dc voltage controller. It is turned on when we turn
on the circuit breaker (CB). Fig. 11 shows the ac collection
bus voltages and currents at initial self-synchronization when
the CB has been turned on to connect synchronverter-based
WECS. As can be seen, the synchronverter-based WECS can
successfully synchronize with the ac collection bus.
Time domain simulation has been carried out to show that
the system operates stably. Fig. 12 shows the ac voltages and
currents at offshore ac collection bus. As can be seen, the
0.4 0.5
quency domain stability analysis in previous subsection (Fig.
10 (a)). More simulations have been carried out to investigate
the controller performance and to prove the feasibility of this
control method. The simulation results have been discussed in
the following.
First simulation has been carried out to investigate the
performance of PR-controller based WFMMC HVDC system.
Fig. 13 shows the MMC arm voltages, currents, circulating
currents and cell voltages for WFMMC in steady-state condi-
tion. Two small-signal disturbances are applied. At 0.5 s the
wind output power has been reduced due to low wind speed
which reduces the arm currents, circulating currents and cell
voltages. The arm voltages remain the same. The time domain
responses show that small-signal variation of the wind power
does not have any impact on the stability. As discussed in
[5], without the CCSC, the system can have low frequency
oscillation. Therefore, in order to study the performance of
the CCSC, the CCSC has been turned off for 0.5 s from 1 s
to 1.5 s. As can be seen, when the CCSC has been turned off,

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1.1 1.1
Ref. Ref.
Meas. Meas.

WECS dc voltage (pu)

WECS dc voltage (pu)

1.05 1.05

1
1
0.04 pu step increase
0.04 pu step increase 0.95 of reference voltage
0.95 of WECS dc voltage 0.07 pu step deacrease
0.07 pu step decrease of wind power
of WECS output power 0.9
0 1 2 3 4
0.9 Time (s)
0 1 2 3 4
Time (s)
Fig. 16: The dc link voltage of dq frame control of WECS
Fig. 14: The dc link voltage of Synchronverter based WECS grid side VSC (Red dashed line is reference value and blue
(Red dashed line is reference value and blue solid line is solid line is measured value).
measured value).

link current and follows the dc voltage reduction; however

0.8 the synchronverter dc voltage control function recovers the dc
voltage and follows the reference value in steady-state.
0.6 The active and reactive power of the wind farm is shown
P in Fig. 15. The wind farm active power has no oscillatory
Power (pu)

0.4 0.04 pu step increase 0.07 pu step decrease
of WECS dc voltage of WECS output power
0.2
0 power inverter is a kind of first order system and is similar to
−0.2
0 1 2 3
Time (s)
Fig. 15: The active and reactive power output of Synchron-
verter based WECS (Red line is the active power and black
dash-line is the reactive power).
the circulating currents has been increased which has increased
the SMs capacitor voltages, however there is no instability or
electrical oscillation in the system similar to the phenomena
noticed in [5] without CCSC and the interconnected system
of wind farms and HVDC operates stably.
Second time domain simulation has been carried out to show
the performance of the WECS dc link voltage controller and
the resulting time domain responses are presented in Figures
14 and 15. As can be seen from time domain response,
the system operates stably as predicted by the Nyquist plot
in previous subsection. Moreover, two transient events are
introduced to show the performance of the control designed
for the Synchronverter-based WECS. At 1 s, a step increase of
0.04 pu dc voltage reference to the Synchronverter is applied
and at 2.5 s, a step reduction of 0.07 pu active power has been
applied. The dc link voltage of the WECS is shown in Fig. 14.
The performance of the dc voltage controller is satisfactory, it
follows the reference voltage. When the dc voltage reference
is step-up 0.04 pu at 1 s, the voltage controller tracks the
reference, the delay to follow the reference depends on the dc
voltage PI-controller time response. The output power step
reduction is applied at 2.5 s which reduces the WECS dc
component. The reactive power has good response during
transient events, since the voltage of ac collection bus is
Q supported by the Synchronverter by means of controlling the
reactive power. As can be seen the behaviour of the wind
a SG. It does not have any oscillatory behaviour.
The dq frame control is also implemented on the ACC
4
bus side WECS VSC to have a view of comparison of
performance with proposed technique. The electrical circuit
parameters and rated power remain the same for both the
synchronverter control and the dq-based control. The inner-
loop current control is assumed and in the outer-loop, a dc
voltage control is implemented in the dq frame control. The
current controller is tuned based on the modulus optimum
criteria and the outer-loop dc voltage controller is tuned
based on the symmetrical optimum tuning criteria [52]. The
detailed control structure of the dq frame control is available
in literature [6] and is not further discussed due to out of
scope. A time domain simulation is carried out with dq frame
control and the same transient disturbances are introduced. Fig.
16 shows response of dc link voltage in the dq-frame control
of the WECS VSC. In comparison with Synchronverter-based
control, the dq-frame control tracks the reference voltage
satisfactory; however when the active power from the wind
turbine generator changes, the performance of the dc volt-
age controller does not remain satisfactory. The dq-control
structure has cascaded multiple control loops which result
oscillatory behaviour due to interaction of the WECS VSC
controller and HVDC converter controller [4]. The impedance
model in Fig. 4 and time domain simulation results in Figures
14 and 16 clearly show that synchronverter based control has
better performance in integrating offshore wind farm through
MMC-based HVDC system.
The wind power is varying continuously due to variation of
the wind speed, therefore a variable wind profile has been
used to study the performance of the synchronverter-based

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6 FFT
Wind power (MW)
500
5.5

Voltage (kV)
5
0
4.5

4 −500
0 0.5 1 1.5 2
1.05 0.8 0.85 0.9 0.95 1
dc link voltage (pu)

1000

Current (A)
1 500

0.95 −500
0 0.5 1 1.5 2
Time (s)
−1000
0.8 0.85 0.9 0.95 1
Fig. 17: Response of WECS dc link voltage with variable wind Time (s)
power, (i) variable wind power and (ii) WECS dc link voltage.
(a)
800 Hz
WECS. Fig. 17 shows the applied variable wind power and
the responses of the dc link voltage of the WECS for the 600
variable wind power. Since the wind power is varying, the dc Magnitude (%)
link voltage is also varying accordingly and remains in the 400
operating range (0.95-1.05 pu). The variation of wind power
does not have any impact on the stability of the system. Since 200 50 Hz
the stability analysis has been performed for small-signal, the
system remains stable for the small-signal range. To ensure
0 200 400 600 800 1000
the stability of the system, the stability analysis has been Frequency (Hz)
performed for the entire operating range.
(b)
Time domain simulation has been carried out for the higher
value of the wind power inverter filter inductor. This inductor Fig. 18: (a) Three-phase ac voltages and currents at ACC bus
is purposely increased to 0.5 mH as described in previous for high value of filter inductor of WECS and (b) FFT of ac
subsection while the wind farm output remain the same at voltage.
the rated value. Fig.18 shows the three-phase ac voltages and
currents at ACC bus and FFT of the voltage. As can be seen the
system is unstable for this condition. The system operates few compared to decoupled dq frame, since the synchronverter
ms to s depending on the interconnected system parameters control does not require a dedicated synchronization unit and
in the simulation, however in the real world the system is it results in less cascaded control blocks.
equipped with many switchgear and protection system which In order to determine the stability of the interconnected
prevent the system operation. An FFT is performed to check system, an impedance based stability method is adopted. The
the frequency of the oscillation and the most dominant fre- impedances of both the wind power inverter and MMC-HVDC
quency is found around 800 Hz in unstable condition which is converter are analytically derived and analytical model is
predicted in frequency domain analysis in previous subsection. verified by comparing the frequency responses obtained from
numerical simulation. The detailed analysis and the results
V. C ONCLUSION presented show the benefits of this controller and its potential
The stability of the offshore wind power network connected for stability. The results highlights the synchronverter’s ability
through a HVDC transmission line is a critical problem since in keeping better performance in point of stability and control
there is no direct connection to a strong ACC bus. To tackle in integrating offshore wind farm through MMC-based HVDC
this problem, this paper has proposed a WECS controller system.
for such ACC bus based on the synchronverter concept. A
synchronverter is introduced in the grid side of WECS VSC
where the wind farms are connected to ac network through
MMC-based HVDC transmission system. The design of the
synchronverter is embedded in the VSC to mimic the way SG
synchronise. The control strategy supports the ACC bus volt-
age that helps to achieve stable system. The observed results
show that this controller minimizes the control interactions

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Transactions on Energy Conversion
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13
Mohammad Amin (M’11) received the B.Sc. de-
gree in electrical and electronic engineering from
Chittagong University of Engineering and Technol-
ogy, Chittagong, Bangladesh, and the M.Sc. degree
in electric power engineering from Chalmers Uni-
versity of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden in 2008
and 2011, respectively. He is working toward the
Ph.D. degree at Norwegian University of Science
and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway.
From 2011 to 2013, he was an Assistant Professor
with the Department of Electrical and Electronic En-
gineering, International Islamic University Chittagong (IIUC) at Chittagong.
In 2015, he was a Ph.D. Visiting Scholar with the Wind Power Research
Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China. His current research
interests include Power electronics converter control, stability and interaction
analysis in VSC and MMC-based HVDC system and wind farm, FACTS, and
grid integration of wind/solar energy.
Atle Rygg received the MSc degree in Electrical En-
gineering from the Norwegian University of Science
and Technology (NTNU) in 2011. From 2011 to
2015 he was a research scientist at SINTEF Energy
Research in the field of power electronics. He is
currently pursuing his PhD-degree at department of
engineering cybernetics at NTNU. His topic or re-
search is impedance based stability analysis of power
electronic systems, where the aim is to contribute
to the fundamental understanding in this family of
methods.
Marta Molinas (M’94) received the Diploma de-
gree in electromechanical engineering from the Na-
tional University of Asuncion, Asuncion, Paraguay,
in 1992; the Master of Engineering degree from
Ryukyu University, Japan, in 1997; and the Doc-
tor of Engineering degree from the Tokyo Institute
of Technology, Tokyo, Japan, in 2000. She was a
Guest Researcher with the University of Padova,
Padova, Italy, during 1998. From 2004 to 2007, she
was a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Norwegian
University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and
from 2008-2014 she has been professor at the Department of Electric
Power Engineering at the same university. She is currently Professor at the
Department of Engineering Cybernetics, NTNU. Her research interests include
stability of power electronics systems, harmonics, instantaneous frequency,
and non-stationary signals from the human and the machine. She is Associate
Editor for the IEEE Journal JESTPE, IEEE PELS Transactions and Editor
of the IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion. Dr. Molinas has been an
AdCom Member of the IEEE Power Electronics Society from 2009 to 2011.