Impacts of large-scale offshore wind farm integration on power systems through VSC-HVDC

The potential of offshore wind energy has been commonly recognized and explored globally. Many countries have implemented and planned offshore wind farms to meet their increasing electricity demands and public environmental appeals, especially in Europe. With relatively less space limitation, an offshore wind farm could have a capacity rating to hundreds of MWs or even GWs that is large enough to compete with conventional power plants. Thus the impacts of a large offshore wind farm on power system operation and security should be thoroughly studied and understood. This paper investigates the impacts of integrating a large-scale offshore wind farm into the transmission system of a power grid through VSC-HVDC connection. The concerns are focused on steady-state voltage stability, dynamic voltage stability and transient angle stability. Simulation results based on an exemplary power system are presented and analyzed.